The Mahler Players
Inverness Cathedral
Four Stars
WHEN my esteemed colleague, the late Michael Tumelty, first heard the Highland-based Mahler Players, his review concluded with the words “I was stunned.” Conductor Tomas Leakey’s group, which Tumelty described as “Scotland’s best-kept musical secret”, comes together to play big music with chamber orchestra-sized forces - and in parts of the country starved of quality performances by composers like Mahler and Wagner.
Leakey has found a crucial ally in this project in composer Matthew King, whose arrangement of Wagner’s unfinished sketches has given The Mahler Players an unusual and admired first recording, Richard Wagner in Venice, and who made the arrangements for the latest programme, from the opera Tristan und Isolde.
With the whole of Act 2 framed by the Prelude to Act 1 and then the opening of Act 3 and the Liebestod, Leakey and King have cherry-picked some of the best music as well as using a substantial amount of the original score. The players, led by Scottish Ballet orchestra violinist Emma Donald, responded with a full-blooded performance with star turns all over the platform.
The two horns deserved particular praise, while the four cellos also put in an impressive shift while the wind soloists featured a fine Act 3 cor anglais solo by Krys Hawryszczuk and beautifully round-toned bass clarinet from Mhairi Callander.
One of her main partners in the Act 2 music was star soloist Sir John Tomlinson. His King Marke was majestic, from his initial querulous response to the assertions of Frederick Jones as the duplicitous Melot to his full-voiced despair at Tristan’s disloyalty - assured, of course, and full of drama.
That theatricality was essential to the whole performance, with Lee Bisset’s Isolde as characterful in her emotional response as in her soaring top notes, and heart-rending in the Liebestod. She and the equally experienced Tristan, tenor Peter Wedd, are a seasoned partnership and clearly confident in each other’s company as well as on the Wagner rollercoaster.
By contrast, Laura Margaret Smith had stepped in to the role of Brangane on a few day’s notice, replacing an indisposed Alwyn Mellor. The mezzo supplied a beautifully-calibrated reading of Isolde’s maid, suggesting a woman with a few issues of her own.
If that front-line was a treat for music lovers in Inverness and Strathpeffer, they should not overshadow the achievement of Leakey, King and the orchestra. At no point did this seem an under-nourished Tristan, and the details of the Wagner’s constant re-casting of the musical material were all there to be appreciated and enjoyed. It was, indeed, a stunning achievement.
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