Thursday 16 April 2026
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
★★★★★
Intimate Mahler and spectacular Vaughan Williams with the Hallé Choir and Youth Choir on superb form
Last Thursday evening’s concert, with The Hallé conducted by the young Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski, began with Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder. The composer set five songs by the Austrian poet Friedrich Rückert for voice and piano in 1901 and 1902. He published them as separate songs and never intended them to be performed as a set. He didn’t even orchestrate them all – it was left to the critic and publisher Max Puttman to complete ‘Liebst du um Schoenheit’ (If you love for beauty) in 1911, after Mahler’s death that year. And there’s no fixed order when they are performed as a set – it’s left to the singer and orchestra or pianist to decide.
There are several different approaches to the songs, particularly in the way the singer performs them with orchestra: compare the wide operatic vibrato of Sonya Yoncheva, the gorgeous operatic mezzo of Christa Ludwig, the lighter approach of Anne Sofie von Otter, and the superb classic recording by Janet Baker, which Richard Wigmore in Gramophone described as ‘lovingly attuned to these most private of Mahler’s songs.’
https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/3KKyub1NcI0nl6VBRbDTdM?utm_source=generator
On Thursday, the baritone Huw Montague Rendall sang the songs, and it was clear from the opening song Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder! (Do not look into my songs), that his approach would be closer to that of a lieder singer in a solo recital than to that of a singer on the operatic stage. His voice was rich and warm, light on the higher notes and gently lyrical, perfectly matched by the playful orchestral accompaniment. He began Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft! (I breathed a gentle fragrance), with a gorgeous sotto voce, beautifully offset against running strings and solo oboe. Throughout the collection of songs, he addressed the audience with calm poise, thoughtfully immersing himself in the music.
Rendell sang Liebst du um Schönheit (If you love for beauty) with a lovely head voice in the top notes, gently ardent in this song about love. In the most dramatic song, Um Mitternacht (At midnight, he sang with richer vibrato and more powerful lower notes, bringing real passion to the climax in the last verse. The orchestra played superbly in the final song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world), with excellent string ensemble, characterful woodwind and a pivoting harp, creating a dark sound world; Rendell’s voice rose from the depths. There was something of the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the beauty of his tone and the expressiveness of his word-painting; there can be no higher praise than that.
After the interval, Rendell was joined by the Finnish soprano Silja Aalto, who had stepped in at short notice (although she sang with such confidence, you wouldn’t have guessed it). The whole of the second half was devoted to Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 1, ‘A Sea Symphony’. The work is a choral symphony, but not in the sense of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, which ends with a setting of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy. Perhaps the nearest comparison is to Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, where the choir sings throughout, although as the symphonies were first performed within a month of each other in the autumn of 1910, it seems unlikely that Vaughan Williams was directly influenced by Mahler. A more obvious influence – acknowledged by Vaughan Williams himself – is Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, whose musical influence can be heard very clearly at times. But Vaughan Williams was keen to stress that his work was a symphony rather than an oratorio,
‘The shape of the work is symphonic rather than maritime or dramatic, and this may be held to justify the frequent repetition of important words and phrases which occur in the poem. The words as well as the music are thus treated symphonically.’
Vaughan Williams set four maritime poems by the American poet Walt Whitman, three from his 1855 collection Leaves of Grass and one from his 1871 collection Passage to India. Whitman’s poems provide a vivid depiction of life at sea, but they also describe the journey of the soul, another link to The Dream of Gerontius, although the text of John Henry Newman in the latter work is much more explicitly religious.
On Thursday, the vast choral forces were made up of the Hallé Choir and the Hallé Youth Choir; there were so many singers in the choir seats that some of those standing in the back row needed their own lights on their scores. The first movement, ‘A Song for All Seas, All Ships’, began with an astonishingly visceral opening statement from choir and brass, ‘Behold, the sea itself.’ It was immediately clear that the choirs were on superb form; the sheer energy and passion of their singing was infectious. Later in the movement, there was a delightful duet between the choirs and baritone Huw Montague Rendall, his noble solo voice contrasting with the massed voices. The choir’s soft singing was equally impressive, contrasting with the sheer volume of the opening. They sang ecstatically, echoing the baritone’s words, ‘A pennant universal’, and there was a much more subdued restatement of ‘Behold the sea itself’ at the end of the movement. The section that began ‘Flaunt out, O sea…’ had strong echoes of Gerontius, which gave the text a spiritual dimension where it describes a flag for ‘the soul of man, one flag above the rest/A spirutual woven signal for all nations…’ Silja Aalto’s voice, slightly more operatic than Rendell’s, carried beautifully over the choirs and orchestra.
The second movement, ‘On the Beach at Night, Alone,’ is overtly spiritual, with its evocation of ‘the clef of the universe’ and the ‘vast similitude [that] interlocks all.’ It called to mind another Victorian poem, Dover Beach, by the English poet Malcolm Arnold, set to music by the 20th-century American composer Samuel Barber.
The movement began with serene lower strings, punctuated by a falling brass theme, setting the scene beautifully. Yearning woodwind, shimmering strings, and evocative brass illustrated Rendell’s word-painting, his tone here reminiscent of the English baritone Thomas Allen. There was a huge sense of spiritual affirmation from the choirs as they sang ‘this vast similitude’. A stunning brass fanfare suggested that the optimistic outlook would continue, but we were suddenly plunged into darkness and doubt as Rendell returned with the opening words, ‘On the beach at night, alone’ before the orchestra finally brought a moment of peace.
The third movement, ‘Scherzo: The Waves’, is a vivid description of life at sea, without any spiritual or philosophical element. It’s set for choir and orchestra only. It’s difficult music for singers, and the words are sometimes set rather awkwardly, but the choirs on Thursday handled it with aplomb. They were superbly rhythmic in their overlapping phrases, creating a joyful evocation of the sea. A triumphant orchestral passage led to a huge, Elgarian melody with a lovely passage that passed through several keys. The movement ended with an exultant cry of ‘Following’ from the choirs.
The final movement, ‘The Explorers’, was much more contemplative at the start, with gentle men’s voices describing the beauty of the Earth (the ‘vast Rondure’) seen from space, as in Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize Winner Orbital, ‘swimming in space’, or Steven Wilson’s top-five album The Overview. A majestic orchestral section led to an early highlight in this long movement, the creation of humankind and the Garden of Eden, with lovely sotto voce singing. Processional music from the orchestra was reminiscent of the Pilgrims’ Chorus from Wagner’s Tannhäuser; the Hallé recently performed the Overture. There was a magical moment when a cappella upper voices sang, of ‘that sad incessant refrain, wherefore unsatisfied soul?’ The orchestral playing, describing ‘captains and engineers’ was magnificent. The emotional, religious and intellectual climax of the movement, the description of ‘the poet worthy of that name/The true son of God’, became a huge affirmation of faith, with the organ ringing out. There was a gorgeously serene duet from the two soloists, and another stunning climax from the choirs in ‘Greater than stars or suns.’ A jolly sea shanty launched the soul on its journey; the choirs sang ecstatically, and the sopranos were particularly fine here. The ending was thoughtful and lush by equal measures, as the yearning soul sailed into the sunset.
Repertoire
Mahler Rückert-Lieder
Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 1 ‘A Sea Symphony’
Performers
The Hallé Orchestra
Hallé Choir
Hallé Youth Choir
Tarmo Peltokoski conductor
Silja Aalto soprano
Huw Montague Rendall baritone
Richard Wigmore Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder: which recording is best? (Gramophone, 21 January 2014)
Now read on…