Death is the great leveller, affecting all individuals irrespective of nationality, ethnicity or creed. It comes to us all, each and every one of us, and the most prescient of composers have directed our attention towards this inescapable event. The pairing of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in this concert given by members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s own Camerata therefore provided endless opportunities for contemplation and reflection.
Britten’s work owes its inspiration to the uniquely gifted horn player Dennis Brain, the presence in the composer’s life of his partner Peter Pears, and the pastoral landscapes of Suffolk captured in the paintings of John Constable. Over and above that it is the richness and heritage of English literature stretching from a medieval dirge to the work of an eminent Victorian which, in Britten’s hands, creates a virtually perfect matching of music and text.
The Serenade begins and ends with a horn solo using the natural harmonics of the instrument. One of the RCO’s principals, Laurens Woudenberg, was the soloist together with Toby Spence. Even allowing for the considerable technical challenges Woudenberg’s playing in the Prologue was not quite immaculate, and despite his vibrant tone over-pitched for this acoustic. A softer dynamic more easily lends itself to the genesis of a sylvan atmosphere. By contrast, the distance chosen for the off-stage Epilogue was ideal, the individual notes lingering magically in the air. Elsewhere there was much to admire: the paring down of the sound in Tennyson’s Nocturne for the line, “The horns of Elfland faintly blowing”; his velvety playing for Blake’s Elegy, effortlessly negotiating the treacherous leaps; the hunting horn qualities at the start of Jonson’s Hymn.
Spence gave a remarkably assured performance of the tenor role. His fresh-toned lyrical voice was immediately appealing, his clear articulation of each individual text reinforcing the importance of the words, the care given to dynamics and colouring in evidence throughout. He offered a wonderfully bleached tone for “The day’s grown old: the fainting Sun” in the opening line of Cotton’s Pastoral; a finely judged shading of the repeated “dying” in Tennyson’s Nocturne; an aching and unsettling certainty for the closing line of Blake’s Elegy, “Does thy life destroy”; a mastery of all the coloratura elements in Jonson’s Hymn; and, in Keats’s Sonnet, the tenderness of the closing line, “And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul”, was underpinned by the dark richness of the accompanying string sextet.
In 1907 Mahler experienced a repetition of the original three hammer blows present in his Sixth Symphony: he was forced out of his position at the Vienna Court Opera, his daughter Maria succumbed to scarlet fever, and he was given the diagnosis of a potentially fatal heart condition. As he commented in a letter to Bruno Walter, “I stand vis-à-vis de rien” (= face-to-face with nothingness). A kind of solace was found in the collection of freely translated poems from the Chinese by Hans Bethge, Die chinesische Flöte. Mahler never heard a performance Das Lied von der Erde, and it is highly likely that had he done so he would have made a series of alterations to the score, as he did with all his other works. One reason why Schoenberg co-founded his Society for Private Musical Performances in 1918 alongside his own disciples Berg and Webern was to make arrangements of contemporary unfamiliar music more generally accessible. He embarked on a version of Mahler’s “song-symphony” but got no further than the first of the six songs before his Society folded in 1922. It was left to the German composer and conductor Rainer Riehn to make use of Schoenberg’s sketches in a completion of the remaining parts some sixty years later. Since then there have been a number of tweaks to the chamber instrumentation by others such as Reinbert de Leeuw and Iain Farrington.
Purists sometimes turn up their noses at the notion of tampering with a composer’s original intentions. On the basis of hearing these wonderful Concertgebouw players, I have to say that any possible doubts would have been quickly dispelled. Mahler originally wrote for a very large orchestra but he used it sparingly, with many concertante-like solo passages in chamber groupings, and only occasional fortissimo outbursts for all the players. Transforming his ideas and textures into a telling tapestry for fourteen individuals, here under the passionate direction of Philipp von Steinaecker, amounted to a novel experience in terms of clarity and integrity of line. It goes without saying that the Concertgebouw has an unparalleled tradition of doing justice to this composer’s music, and the quality of these players as well as their richness of timbre resulted in a highly satisfying experience. The plangency of oboe and cor anglais, the ripeness of clarinet, the depth of bassoon, the vibrancy of horn and the layers of intensity contained in the playing of the string sextet provided constant delights to the ear. One might quibble about the use of some additional instruments, like the buzzing of the accordion in the first movement, or the occasional “filling in of the gaps” by the piano, but the celesta in the closing song is an inspired touch. Again and again the pungency of the woodwind was a reminder of the specific sonorities so typical of this composer.
The six songs drawn from Bethge’s poetry focus on life’s pleasures, including beauty, youth and intoxication, as well as on bitter realities such as the pain of melancholy or the shadowy approach of death. It falls to the two vocal soloists to articulate those feelings. Spence is no full-throttle Heldentenor, but that didn’t matter in the least here since his high-lying lyrical intensity shone through the instrumental textures. His familiarity with the score paid ample dividends too: it is always a particular joy to hear such careful attention being paid to the words. The repetition of “ist mehr wert” with growing intensity in the opening Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde is a case in point; he also conjured up a sense of wonderment in the fifth song, Der Trunkene im Frühling, with its references to a bird singing and laughing in the tree, a broad smile covering his face.
In one sense Spence was well matched with his partner, the Slovenian mezzo-soprano Barbara Kozelj. They both have lighter, clearly focused voices that project well. In the second song, Der Einsame im Herbst, her voice opened out majestically for “Sonne der Liebe, willst du nie mehr scheinen”. Though her instrument is secure in the middle and upper registers, it is recognisably a mezzo, lacking the rich depth of the alto range. I missed more character and colouring for “Mein Herz ist müde”. In the fourth song, Von der Schönheit, an evenness of line is essential here, and there were moments of sharpness from Kozelj at odds with the gossamer-like magic of the words.
The final movement, Der Abschied, is almost as long in duration as the other five put together. It is a test for any voice, requiring a steadiness, especially in softer passages, with an awareness of the many subtleties in the narrative line which encompass both the beauties in surrounding nature but also the transitoriness of these impressions. Here Kozalj blended sensitively with all the instrumental colour, in the extended flute solo for “In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder”, her transition from “Die Welt schläft ein” to the descending bassoon scale, and the nicely impassioned “Wo bleibst du?” that ushers in the final outpouring from the combined ensemble. Glimpses of eternity were there too in the iterations of the key word “ewig”, supported by the celesta, Kozalj’s voice fading at the end into the bounds of discernibility.
The mood at the conclusion of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde is inevitably one of sadness, even if the listener has no full cognisance of the composer’s personal biography. It is already something of a leave-taking, though the Ninth Symphony was yet to come. However, the key message is contained in the concluding stanza. Yes, all beauty fades and, yes, death lies in wait, but “everywhere the dear earth blossoms in spring and grows green again”. The act of renewal, of repeating the cycle over and over again, is an integral part of this process.
Alexander Hall
Britten – Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op. 31; Mahler – Das Lied von der Erde (arr. by Arnold Schoenberg and Rainer Riehn)
Toby Spence (tenor) – Laurens Woudenberg (horn); Barbara Kozelj (mezzo-soprano)
Camerata RCO: Tijmen Huisingh (violin); Coraline Groen (violin); Santa Vižine (viola); Johan van Iersel (cello); Georgina Poad (double bass); Julie Moulin (flute); Miriam Pastor Burgos (oboe/cor anglais); Hein Wiedijk (clarinet); Marceau Lefevre (bassoon); Fons Verspaandonk (horn); Adriaan Feyaerts (percussion); Tom Pritchard (percussion); Daan Kortekaas (piano); Ellen Zijm (accordion); Philipp von Steinaecker (conductor)
Wigmore Hall, London, 8 October 2025
Top image: Toby Spence (photo by Mitch Jenkins courtesy of Askonas Holt)