The master of surround sound

By WILLIAM DART

This week, the Auckland Philharmonia adds another Mahler symphony to its repertoire with a performance of the mighty Second under Miguel Harth-Bedoya.

This symphonic colossus, clocking in at around the 80-minute mark, calls for two soloists, along with considerable choral and orchestral forces. In other words, just the sort of team challenge the Auckland Philharmonia revels in.

"One score lies always on my piano," wrote Richard Strauss, "that of Mahler's Second Symphony - and I never cease to learn from it."

Another composing colleague, Arnold Schoenberg, was so excited by the work that he experienced "a violent throbbing of the heart".

It has been a testing ground for conductors, too. In 1938 Bruno Walter hailed this as the first of the composer's symphonies to pose metaphysical questions that demanded answers and solutions.

Forty years later, another great Mahlerian, Bernard Haitinck, expressed worries about "the danger of becoming a bit kitschy" with all the theatrical elements in the score, in particular those off-stage players.

Miguel Harth-Bedoya, speaking from Birmingham, where he is about to step on to the podium with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, is refreshingly practical, even pragmatic.

"The instruments are off-stage because they wouldn't fit on-stage any more. This was music written before stereo was invented, and in many ways Mahler was trying to create a sort of surround sound."

Harth-Bedoya's main concern with the score is "shaping and pacing, keeping continuity". Not surprisingly, he is an admirer of the classic interpretations of Claudio Abbado and Kurt Mazur.

We talk of the vocal component of the symphony. The ravishing Urlicht (Primeval Light) for mezzo soloist, and the all-embracing sound world of the great Finale which gives the symphony its Resurrection title.

Harth-Bedoya contends that the connection with song goes deeper than the setting of words, however spiritual. "Song informed practically everything that Mahler composed. Even his treatment of the orchestra can be traced to his treatment of voice. It is no accident that one of his favourite directions is gesangvoll [singing out]."

The printed scores reveal much. They are "full of warnings rather than indications. Mahler was a conductor and it shows. He is so specific, showing us how to produce musical shapes that could in no way have been notated differently."

Harth-Bedoya sings the cello and bass theme which opens the symphony, one of the many Mahlerian gestures that obviously strike a chord with the conductor.

It all connects with his first Mahler experience: "It was in Chile and I was 18 or 19. At that stage, I liked opera and in Mahler I heard the same musical gestures, the same emotions."

Harth-Bedoya is looking forward to collaborating with mezzo Helen Medlyn and soprano Deborah Wai Kapohe, seen together in last year's NBR New Zealand Opera's Falstaff.

The conductor has worked with Medlyn before in the Auckland Philharmonia's Das Lied von der Erde in 2000 and, a few months ago, called the mezzo to Eugene, Oregon, for a performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony as part of his farewell concert with the orchestra.

"I like the timbre of her voice and the way in which she understands the words and deals with them. With so many singers the words become secondary. The tone of her voice is so beautiful she doesn't need to worry too much about expressivity."

There is one other bonus, too. The choral side of things is taken care of by the Tower New Zealand Youth Choir, Tower Voices New Zealand and the New Zealand Secondary Schools Choir, all coached by the estimable Karen Grylls. It should be a special night.

* Auckland Philharmonia plays Mahler's Second Symphony, Auckland Town Hall, Thursday, at 8pm.