Boulez
Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
Mahler
Das klagende Lied (1880 original version)
Natalya Romaniw (soprano)
Jennifer Johnston (mezzo-soprano)
Russell Thomas (tenor)
James Newby (baritone)
Carlos González Nápoles (treble)
Malakai Bayoh (alto)
Constanza Chorus
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Hannu Lintu
Reviewed by: Alexander Hall
Reviewed: 4 August, 2025
Venue: Royal Albert Hall
Bruno Maderna was an enormously influential figure in the history of music after the Second World War, acting as friend, mentor and teacher of amongst others Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio and not least Pierre Boulez, so it was only natural after Maderna’s premature (at the age of 53) death from lung cancer in 1973 that his passing should be marked in musical ways too. Boulez’s Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna was premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in April 1975, and the preface to the published score includes the composer’s words: “Perpetual alternation…Litany for an imaginary ceremonial…Ceremonial of remembrance…”
In structure, the work constantly plays with the number seven, reflecting the number of letters in Maderna’s name. There are seven basic notes which occur in varying permutations. Seven groups of instruments, together with a solo oboe, spread horizontally and vertically over the entire platform, are underpinned by additional percussion players who operate dozens of different instruments, many originating from Asia and Africa. The piece consists of seven sections, each repeated twice, with a coda. In a nod to Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, as Boulez’s tribute to his friend draws to a close, fewer and fewer instruments are heard.
And what of performances? In particular this one, with Hannu Lintu conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra? It could easily have been the composer himself in charge. Lintu’s frame remained perfectly upright throughout, delivering very precise movements of the right hand, the left hand only rarely engaged, the players sometimes responding to specific cues, sometimes picking up threads from within the ensemble. It is an established fact that the Royal Albert Hall lends itself to all kinds of spatial effects, the overlapping of sonorities being one specific feature. Unlike most other requiems, there was no dramatic progression, no spoken or sung texts to add further meaning, and therefore no built-in tension either. The nearest approximation to standard liturgical practice came through an occasional sense of the wailing and gnashing of teeth, of graves being opened on Judgement Day, the metallic percussion often contributing an icy chill to proceedings, yet with little or nothing that might bring consolation to a troubled soul. What this performance underlined is that despite, or perhaps even because of, the academic complexities of construction, nothing sounded precisely the same as what had just been heard. It was rather like driving through a vast desert: you expect monotony from the mountains of sand, yet amidst these shifting tonal landscapes the contours change from one moment to the next.
Maderna’s affinity for the music of Mahler was well documented. Two years before his death he put down an incandescent live recording of the Ninth Symphony with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a farewell to life and ceremonial of death. So it was entirely fitting to see a link between the two halves of this concert, even though Mahler’s cantata Das klagende Lied came from the earliest phase of his career. Death is the dark companion throughout: this work can also be seen as a requiem for Mahler’s younger brother Ernst who died when Gustav was only fourteen. He spent the rest of his life experiencing survivor guilt.
Mahler submitted the sprawling and vast score (six harps alone, but here reduced to just four) for the 1881 Beethoven Prize in Vienna, where the jury included Brahms, Goldmark, Hanslick and Richter. His failure to make any headway with these luminaries meant that the work was set aside; it was the 1893 revision, which saw the jettisoning of the first part, Waldmärchen, and a reduction in the forces involved, that was eventually premiered in 1901. Not until 1969 was Waldmärchen rediscovered among Alma Mahler’s papers. It comes closest to the opera that Mahler had wanted to write, a planned cooperation with his friend Hugo Wolf having come to naught, and his completion of Weber’s Die drei Pintos in 1886 not being a fully-blown original.
Mahler’s fascination for folk mythology led him to construct a libretto based on two published sources, including Der singende Knochen by The Brothers Grimm. Like all such tales, this plot features archetypes embedded in the hinterland of the human psyche. There’s a beautiful yet scornful queen and two brothers, the younger fair, kind and chivalrous, the older dark, scheming and cruel. It is the virtuous brother who succeeds in accomplishing the task set by the queen, finding a special red flower in the forest in exchange for her hand in marriage. However, the older brother kills his sibling and buries the body, only for it to be found later by a strolling minstrel who fashions a flute from one of the bones. When he plays it at the queen’s wedding banquet, the instrument takes on a life of its own and recounts the tale of the murder. Though the English title is rendered as The Song of Lamentation, it is important to note the double meaning of a key word in German, testament to the ability of music to speak truth unto power and expose injustice. The word for a lawsuit in German is “Klage”, which carries all the connotations of accusation. That is the sting that continues until the very end.
In musical terms, the composer’s Opus One is already highly significant in carrying many of Mahler’s later hallmarks: a richly-varied orchestral palette, a remarkable theatrical intensity and an uncanny sense of irony. This is particularly striking at the banquet when the offstage band continues to play trite and celebratory music while the crime of the queen’s new husband (the older brother) is revealed to the gathering.
As I listened to this performance, I couldn’t help feeling that Lintu was still conducting inside the Boulez sound-world. It was all meticulously directed, the pastoral scenes always unruffled, with hardly any surge in the emotional temperature. Precise in manner but taken straight from the fridge. The texts in all three parts are like a continuous narrative, with the chorus commenting, Greek-style, on the events as they unfold. As with all storytellers, you need variation and pace to sustain interest. Jennifer Johnston’s warm and involving mezzo was an unmitigated delight, the clarity of her diction never in doubt, and her care over the German repeatedly in evidence. She found the loveliest of deep chest tones for “Welch’ seltsam traurig Singen!” in the second part, as she recounted the sounds of the minstrel’s doleful flute, and had agonising authority in the voice for “Was ist der König so bleich und stumm?” in the concluding Hochzeitsstück, when the elder brother’s crime is revealed.
Natalya Romaniw did not appear to be having the best of nights. She was occasionally tested by the tessitura, and I found her squally tone less than engaging. Far more serious, however, was her inadequate German: her exact words as the grisly story unravelled were often inaudible. Both James Newby’s baritone and Russell Thomas’s tenor were secure and offered distinctive tonal colouring. In the second part, James Newby in particular captured true Mahlerian spirit for “Dort ist’s so lind und voll von Duft”, with a soft horn solo and gentle strings in support. Carlos González Nápoles as treble and Malakai Bayoh as alto acquitted themselves well.
The entire performance would have benefited from extra rehearsal time. The choral forces made up of the BBC Symphony Chorus and Constanza Chorus were ragged in their initial entries, with far too many sibilants, and in the ceremonial pomp and panoply of the Hochzeitsstück there needed to be more weight and rhythmic accentuation. The off-stage band, which makes appearances in the second and third parts, was positioned high up in the gallery, and yet was still far too loud: nothing ever sounded remotely distant enough. Above all, what I missed repeatedly was the intensity of the moment: as the horror of the crime is revealed at the wedding banquet, the tremolo shivers from the violas needed to chill the marrow, and each crescendo that Mahler marks must have sustained amplitude.
One key indicator in any performance is timing. Lintu required 70 minutes to traverse the score; Gielen, in his dark and impassioned Vienna recording took only 62, Chailly in Berlin just two minutes more. Mahler’s marking for Waldmärchen is “Langsam und träumerisch” (slowly and dreamily), but the evocation of atmosphere must not come at the expense of forward momentum. Mahler probably had the right instincts in feeling that his first part needed rethinking, and indeed he spent his entire career making adjustments and alterations to his scores, but he never approached anything he did with the kind of emotional attenuation we had here.