Last Updated on August 28, 2026
Memorable Mahler at the Proms
4.0 out of 5.0 starsAs a culturally minded singleton in my 20s, I used to ‘prom’ (queue up on the day for standing tickets) at the BBC’s Proms summer festival at the Royal Albert Hall about twice a week. It’s still, to my mind, the best value ticket in London if you’re willing to put up with a bit of discomfort, and proves that classical music invented the mosh pit decades before more popular genres!
Although some things have changed, the atmosphere remains unique, and I love it. The Prom in question was a reprise of a programme the Met Orchestra and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin premiered in New York a few months back. For those unfamiliar with the Met Orchestra, which is making its Proms debut, it is both the professional orchestra for the Metropolitan Opera and a freestanding orchestra of growing renown. If they have a speciality, it is in music with orchestra and vocalists: something which tonight’s performance demonstrated to very good effect. As well as opera, their USP is an ability-based blind audition process that draws 100s, or even 1000s, of aspiring players to audition for each vacancy. This emphasis on virtuosity was abundantly evident in the concert, their second in two nights.
The programme started with Kaija Saariaho’s ‘Lumière et Pesanteur’ (or ‘Light and Gravity’). The composer wrote that it was “a gift for [the famous conductor and fellow Finn] Esa-Pekka Salonen, inspired by his performance of my ‘La Passion de Simone’ in Los Angeles, January 2009, composed for the French philosopher Simone Weil.”
I confess that I haven’t been much aware of Saariaho’s music, even though a 2019 composers’ poll ranked her as the greatest living composer. The Met has an established relationship with her: their staging of ‘L’Amour de loin’ was only the second opera by a female composer ever presented by the company.
The piece is quite short and drew a shimmering sound quality from the Met, aided by the scoring for delightfully light percussion. To a newcomer, it seemed to me firmly in the tradition of French music; Saariaho lived in France for most of her working life, but also worked extremely well as an introduction to the main body of the concert: two familiar pieces of Mahler. It won’t be the last of her pieces I listen to.
It was followed by the ‘Ruckert’ lieder – one of Mahler’s shortest orchestral song cycles, composed following a near-fatal period of ill health accompanied by relationship tension; the last of the 5 songs was in some ways a peace offering and was added later to the cycle with an orchestration by another composer. The solos were sung by the leading American opera singer and recitalist Joyce DiDonato. The cheer that greeted her arrival on stage was a testament to her outstanding reputation with the Proms audience, and her performance showed this was richly merited. Despite the Albert Hall’s acoustic, often a challenge for singers, DiDonato offered immaculate diction and variety of tone. Orchestra, singer and conductor felt completely and very touchingly in harmony and balance, particularly after the first of the 5 songs.
The second half was given over to Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. This is a less monumental work than, for example, his 2nd or 8th symphonies and had a distinctly mixed reception when first performed. One reviewer called it a ‘great leap forward’ while another criticised a ‘succession of disjointed and heterogeneous atmospheres and expressions mixed with instrumental quirks and affectations.’ The saving grace for many was the unexpected vocal solo in the final movement.
Of course, a mixed first reception is no indicator of a work’s final reputation; there was a riot at the first performance of Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’, and the Fourth Symphony became the most played of the composer’s symphonic works during Mahler’s life. After a period when Mahler’s music fell out of fashion, not to mention being banned by the Nazis, it has deservedly become a core part of the orchestral repertoire.
When the piece was performed by the Met in New York, reviewers described it as ‘a work in progress’ for the conductor. In places it was truly wonderful: the slow movement, for example, reflected an orchestra absolutely at home with maintaining momentum through Wagnerian long, slow passages. The final movement with the sudden appearance of DiDonato singing from the back of the orchestra was also very fine. I agree with the New York reviewer that her voice is perhaps too big for the ‘childlike quality’ specified by Mahler, but it was lovely.
If there is a criticism it would be that the very soloistic quality of the Met, in a piece where there are a lot of short solos for wind and horns, coupled with the Royal Albert Hall’s acoustic meant that at times the balance didn’t feel quite right and as a result some of the transitions felt a bit clunky: this may have been deliberate however, the first theme of the second movement is meant to resemble a “pied piper” type figure.
The encore, Mahler’s ‘Uhrlich’, was quite simply to die for. Overall, this was a concert I will remember for a long time.
17 July – 12 September
Royal Albert Hall
Kensington Gore,
South Kensington,
London SW7 2AP
BBC Proms are available free of charge on BBC Sounds. If you’d like to hear this one for yourself, the link is here
Proms Photo Credit: Pete Scalzitti
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