PROMS 2026: The Met Orchestra and Mahler

When Alma and Gustav Mahler arrived in New York just before the Christmas of 1907, they were installed in a lavishly appointed suite at the Hotel Majestic, with views overlooking Central Park. Alma’s reaction was: “We felt at home.” After ten years in charge of the Vienna Court Opera, her husband had been given a contract to conduct performances at the Metropolitan Opera for just three months annually, with a salary that was worth more than five times what he had earned previously. On New Year’s Day, he conducted Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde to great acclaim. However, the happiness was not to last long (Did it ever in Mahler’s life?). Toscanini had also been hired by the Met management, putting Mahler’s nose out of joint. After two short seasons at the Met, he moved on to the New York Philharmonic. So there is a clear connection between Mahler and the Met, though the composer conducted little of his work in the great American metropolis. On the second night at this year’s Proms, the current Met Orchestra and Yannick Nézét-Séguin offered two contrasting works, the Rückert-Lieder and the Fourth Symphony, linked by the soloist Joyce DiDonato. Death provides a thematic bridge. Friedrich Rückert, dismissed in a programme note as “fertile and facile”, was certainly prodigious, publishing over six thousand poems. In the 121 settings of his work, including by composers such as Schubert, the two Schumanns, Brahms, Bruch and Richard Strauss, he ranks behind Goethe, Heine and Rilke as the fourth most set poet of the German language. That is no mean achievement. His skill is evident, for instance, in the punning, assonance and alliteration of “l” sounds in Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft. Rückert’s five poems, composed in the early years of the 20th century, were not intended to form a set, though four of them were premiered together in January 1905. Nor is there a pre-ordained order: in most cases, however, the cycle has Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen as its conclusion. There is an essential intimacy, a sense of eternal truths being imparted rather than proclaimed, which requires a corresponding delivery. These songs do not respond well to an operatic treatment. That said, there is a huge problem involved in conveying character and subtlety to a vast audience in a cavernous space. Joyce DiDonato did not help matters by projecting all her words towards the arena, leaving those in the side stalls guessing at individual words. There is a natural warmth to her voice, though her communicative skills were not all that much in evidence. What emerged was a disconcerting sameness, not helped by the absence of body language, equally obvious later in the Fourth Symphony. The first and shortest of the songs, Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!, is full of whimsy. Playfulness was always part of Mahler’s dramatic repertory, especially when underlaid by irony, and DiDonato, in a sleeveless black gown with splashes of rhinestones, didn’t fully explore this dimension. I missed the exclamation mark! She offered an admirable evenness of phrasing in Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft, matched in a fine duet with the solo oboe, also demonstrating a good variation in dynamics, but the voice never quite achieved a state of rapture. In Liebst du um Schönheit, written as a love song for Alma during the first summer holiday they spent together in 1902, DiDonato had to stretch a little, especially in her top line, and there were signs of vocal fraying elsewhere in this cycle. For Um Mitternacht the emotional undercurrents were kept somewhat in check, the articulation of the words lacking the last degree in precision, but she delivered all the necessary anguish for the line “O Menschheit, deiner Leiden”. In Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, the withdrawn nature of DiDonato’s voice often worked against the requirements of audibility, though she soared appropriately at the end, with cor anglais solo and whispering strings quite magical. For the Met orchestra I have nothing but praise. Lest his sins obscure his achievements, let it be said that James Levine in his many decades in charge of this ensemble elevated it to a high level of distinction. This has carried through into the Nézét-Séguin era. The strings have a warmth and homogeneity not present in one of the other orchestras visiting from the US this season; they have an uncanny sense of internal balances; above all, their experience in accompanying the human voice showed in this song cycle. Nézét-Séguin was perfectly in tune with his soloist throughout, often mouthing the words and turning repeatedly to DiDonato. I can’t imagine that these players get to perform these works by Mahler all that often. There was a commendable freshness in their playing. Nothing sounded routine. This concert began with a short piece by Kaija Saariaho, Lumière et pesanteur, with the light more in evidence than the gravity. Written for Esa-Pekka Salonen, and here given its first performance at the Proms, this is music of the twilight, highly atmospheric and at times quite eerie, a sense of expectancy never completely realised. Can you love Mahler too much? This thought was prompted by Nézét-Séguin’s treatment of the Fourth Symphony. It was played quite beautifully, often lovingly, all the lyrical veins fully explored, with instrumental detail gently highlighted, producing painterly qualities like those of the water-colourist, the furiously delivered bass drum intervention towards the close of the slow movement perhaps being an obvious exception. It was easy to see in this performance why the Fourth is frequently seen as Mahler’s sunniest, most approachable work. There was plenty to admire here too, in the flexibility of pulse, the transparency of texture and luminosity of sound, as well as respect for the composer’s markings, such as the instruction to wind players to hold their bells up. And yet. Mahler would not be Mahler if limited to one-dimensionality. There was rather a lot of sunlight in the first movement, touches of heartache well hidden, but the lack of piquancy became apparent in Benjamin Bowman’s solos in the Scherzo, where the scordatura sound of the instrument, a whole tone higher, should conjure up a rustic fiddle, indicating the appearance of the Grim Reaper. Both violins were beautifully played, but they were almost interchangeable. The excess of love was palpable in the slow movement, Nézét-Séguin stretching its length to twenty-two minutes. By way of comparison, Klemperer takes only eighteen in his 1961 recording: there is no Adagio marking, it is simply Ruhevoll (= peaceful). When I saw DiDonato sitting between the fourth horn and the harp, I already had concerns. She is to be commended for being on stage from the very beginning, unlike some soloists I have seen making a mad dash for the front of the platform when the clarinet solo indicates the start of the Finale. However, in this hall her voice became merely an additional instrumental detail. There was nothing in the way of theatricality either, DiDonato holding fast to her music-stand, and indeed Mahler specifies that the text is to be sung with childlike and serene expression. Nevertheless, the words matter because they delineate a child’s vision of heaven, even with all the irony present in Saints John and Luke leading lambs and oxen to slaughter. Here, the text was for the most part inaudible from my position in the auditorium. It is unusual for any kind of encore to follow on from a performance of the Fourth Symphony. DiDonato sang the Urlicht, the fourth movement from Mahler’s Resurrection symphony, and in this the tessitura played more to her strengths in the middle register. It was a fitting end to this concert, not least through the wonderfully sensitive and responsive playing of the Met orchestra, but also because it took the audience into realms beyond earthly existence. Alexander Hall PROMS 2026: The Met Orchestra Plays Mahler Saariaho – Lumière et pesanteur. Mahler – Rückert-Lieder. Mahler – Symphony No 4 in G major. Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano); Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York – conductor, Yannick Nézét-Séguin Royal Albert Hall London, 27 August 2026 All photos © Pete Scalzitti