Two years ago, at its last Melbourne appearance, the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) performed Gustav Mahler’s last completed symphony, the Ninth. Ninety minutes long, that one work was the programme. For its return last Wednesday night, the AWO upped the ante. It presented well over two hours of music, and two Mahler symphonies, at its one-night Mahlerfest, with the strapline ‘Audacious. Exhilarating. Limitless.’ By mounting both Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth symphonies the AWO achieved a feat never before seen in the Southern Hemisphere. As its conductor and, we could also say, its promoter Alexander Briger commented in the lavish, outsized souvenir booklet: ‘It is, we admit, a huge programme! However, the AWO believes in serving 12-course smorgasbords!’ This was another claimed ‘first’ for an occasionally convened orchestra of Australian musicians, some drawn from our own orchestras but more from beyond: ever-roaming virtuoso travellers, or holders of major positions in orchestras from Israel to Denmark and Chicago to Auckland.

For this feisty, double-bill feat, Briger chose well, as these two mid-career symphonies of Mahler provide immediate contrast. The Fourth is more modest in size of orchestra, number and form of movements, and also in compositional palette. The Fifth is on the edge of being gargantuan – you could even say ‘gross’– with more power, even vehemence, across its five movements, and with its bonus twenty-minute duration. Even more tellingly, the Fourth, composed mainly across two summers of 1899 and 1900, is Mahler’s farewell to the nineteenth century. It is his last work under the 1890s spell of ‘Wunderhorn’ poetic inspiration, as is made explicit in the last movement when a soprano joins the otherwise instrumental ensemble to sing verses of the folk-like poem ‘Das Himmlische Leben’ (The Heavenly Life). Then, with a small chronological step, Mahler makes a gigantic leap for musical kind. The Fifth, composed over the summers of 1901 and 1902, is his first big offering to the bolder, brasher, more brutal twentieth century. The poetry of Friedrich Rückert is an inspiration here, again paralleling Mahler’s song settings. Mahler would spend the rest of his life trying to rework its complex textures and more extreme sonic range. Only its fourth movement, a love song to his (sometimes turbulent) wife, Alma, provides a substantial break in this more clamorous milieu. In fact, that slight adagietto is today his most famous hit.

So, did Briger’s bold gamble come off – was it another Aussie ‘first’? – or did it turn out to be an ‘own goal’ through its sheer audacity? As a promotion, I think it worked well. In an age when most classical music is struggling for live audiences, it drew a large and curious crowd that filled out most of Melbourne’s 2,500-seat Hamer Hall. The inherent contrasts between the two works were enough to keep the audience spellbound and the dexterity of these seasoned players was never really in question. Even our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, noted in his ‘Welcome Letter’ that the evening presented a contrast between the Fourth’s ‘lyrical’ character and the ‘emotionally charged’ Fifth. While the Fourth breathes enough, and often highlights more soloistic and chamber-like passages between its full orchestral roars, the Fifth is more relentless and ‘thrilling’, sometimes leaving us breathless, even momentarily deafened. Both works demonstrate that eternal tussle between angst and beauty that perhaps best characterises Mahler’s magical arts.

Mahlerfest (photograph by Heidi Victoria)

As a conductor, Alexander Briger was scrupulous, ever cautious that nothing go off the rails at such a high-flying event. He performed both works from memory and assumed a modest podium demeanour. What his disciplined baton technique might lack in interpretative pizzazz or formal sculpting, he more than makes up with rhythmic clarity, balance between the parts, and good tempo control. Yet when Mahler’s ubiquitous instructions say ‘Don’t hold back’, well, he lets the music itself rip. His tempos were generally brisk – there were a lot of notes to get through on Wednesday night, after all – but were suited to the occasional nature of this ensemble, where many players do not know each other that well, musically. In the famous love movement of the Fifth, he proved to be a ‘moderate’. While Mahler himself, by report, played this ‘very slow’ movement in a sprightly seven-and-a-quarter minutes, Briger completed it in just on ten minutes, compared with over fourteen minutes for some of the snooziest of the last century’s conductors! The many pages of the Mahlerfest’s booklet outlined Briger’s detailed musical and historical thoughts about both works, but especially the more modest Fourth, which he confesses ‘for me, is very, very personal’. And that greater bonding was, I think, conveyed. Under him, the Fifth came across as an Olympian showpiece, to be negotiated by scaling its towering pinnacles and jagged chasms without losing grip.

What, then, did the discerning audience of Mahler lovers make of this Mahlerfest? After the Fourth, the applause was generous enough. The audience recognised the fine, often soloistic work of the woodwind section, as well as the endearing role of German soprano Sarah Traubel in her peaceful ‘Heavenly Life’ conclusion to the work. After the Fifth, with its snappy applause-rousing Rondo Finale, the reaction was more ecstatic, the audience paying particular homage to the horn players who so strongly featured in the craggy Scherzo movement, the trusty and often stratospheric strings, and, ultimately, the intrepid conductor and promoter of this adventurous double bill.

One interesting feature of AWO concerts is the shuffling of leading players’ seating. This results in the featuring of a different leader of the orchestra (that is, the leading first violin) for each symphony. This position is important; while the conductor directs the performance, in technical terms, the leader (or concertmaster) leads the performance, often playing just micro-seconds ahead of the mass of players. On Wednesday night, while Mahler’s Fourth was led by Rebecca Chan, from London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, who very correctly led the strings, especially through the complexities of its ‘devilish’ second movement Scherzo, the Fifth Symphony was led by Daniel Dodds, from the Festival Strings of Lucerne. Of the two, Dodds was the more demanding leader, effectively urging on the music towards its many climaxes, when, after over two hours, the players were noticeably flagging, and visually marking the speed of the slide in the many glissandos that Mahler requires of his string players. This change of leader during the concert made me wonder if a change of conductors, even, might have been considered for such a gruelling programme.

Australia seems to be doing well in élite music. With a healthy Australian Youth Orchestra, Australian World Orchestra, and Australian National Academy of Music, all in receipt of government and growing philanthropic support, we appear to be well positioned for an illustrious future. Unfortunately, we are not. With many of our conservatoriums experiencing funding challenges – and some even slated for closure – and a dwindling level of support for school and community music, our current riding of the musical wave may – as we have seen in élite sport after the glamorous 2000 Olympics – be headed for an untimely dumping. As with the AWO, we can be audacious, and exhilarating, but musical talent is not limitless. It requires careful and calculated tuition, for youth, for a decade or so to produce the playing that Melbourne and Sydney audiences have heard from these peak Australian ensembles in recent weeks.