The once familiar sight of bustling Bridgewater Hall greeted the Hallé orchestra, who opened their spring season with a long-awaited performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony – originally scheduled for May 2020.
Where Mahler’s Second Symphony follows the passage of darkness into light, the Third gets even closer to his world-encompassing aspiration, charting nature’s journey via mankind towards God’s love. Involving six, lopsidedly arranged movements, requiring a vast number of musicians and lasting for well over 90 minutes, it’s an ambitious piece to programme at any time, but, with a vista of performers on one side and a packed auditorium on the other, Mark Elder was a picture of calm, interrupting his economical gestures only to shake more sound out of the strings.
Elder’s dedication to painting the big picture can come at the expense of rhythmic transparency, but the sound he conjures from the Hallé is plush, dramatic and – crucially for this work – unhurried. The orchestra’s nine horns began proceedings resolutely as each section presented their own vivid colours in turn through the sprawling opening movement, Katy Jones’s sonorous trombone solo the pick of the bunch.
