RSNO & RSNO Chorus, Glasgow review: 'a mind-blowing performance'

Thomas Søndergård conducting Mahler's Symphony No2 | Sally Jubb

RSNO & RSNO Chorus, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ★★★★★

Whenever Mahler turned his mind to life, death, and in his “Resurrection” Symphony a suggestion of the hereafter, even doubters might have been tempted to consider their options. Going on the explosive response by Saturday’s capacity Glasgow audience to a mind-blowing RSNO performance of this epic Second Symphony, it’s easy to imagine their particular homeward thoughts turning, at the very least, to the meaning of life.

For that is what the religiously-sceptical composer had in mind. This performance triumphed on every conceivable stratum, from its scintillating microscopic detail to a mountainous macro level that held us in thrall throughout a spellbinding 90-minute journey. With over 250 musicians serving him - onstage and off-stage orchestras, the RSNO Chorus and soloists Julie Roset (soprano) and Linda Watson (mezzo soprano) - music director Thomas Søndergård matched precision engineering with an intuitive mastery in probing the symphony’s infinite message.

Mesmerising from the offset, its crystalline detail underpinned by funereal tremors. The expertly-paced opening movement conjured up an exhilarating solemnity, irrepressible inevitability sprinkled with paradoxical surprises, a translucent complexity in which myriad conversations seemed to happening at the same time, before the screaming despair of Mahler’s dead hero questioning his existence.

Then to the relative respite of the Andante’s tempered iridescence and airy nonchalance, and the bittersweet grotesquerie of a third movement reminiscent at times of Berlioz, before the aching stillness of Urlicht, sung with time-stopping poise by Linda Watson and preparing the way for the turbulent Finale.

Here, the evening’s full forces were emphatically brought to bear. Distant offstage bands struck out from seemingly all angles like some galactic intervention, countering the spiritual glow from a resplendent RSNO Chorus and ethereal luminescence of soprano Julie Roset. With the symphony’s earth-shattering climax, a truly unforgettable experience reached its blinding conclusion.