The Multitudes arts festival at South Bank Centre embraces music, art, film, dance, circus and more: a mixed-media celebration designed to attract new audiences and revivify the traditional. Mahler’s Eighth Symphony combines an ecstatic expression of religious faith with a more humanistic vision in the form of Goethe’s Faust. Where Part 1 of the symphony is a setting of the Latin hymn text Veni Creator Spiritus, Part 2 treats the closing scene of Faust, in which the seeker of forbidden knowledge finds redemption.
Mahler once told his fellow-composer Sibelius that a symphony must be like the world: it must embrace everything. He might well have echoed the words of Walt Whitman that a symphony should “contain multitudes” – all of which makes it a good fit for this festival, not least with the monumental forces involved: huge orchestra, two choirs plus children’s choir, eight soloists and offstage brass.
