The Multitudes arts festival at South Bank Centre embraces music, art, film, dance, circus and more: a mixed-media celebration designed to attract new audiences and revivify the traditional. Mahler’s Eighth Symphony combines an ecstatic expression of religious faith with a more humanistic vision in the form of Goethe’s Faust. Where Part 1 of the symphony is a setting of the Latin hymn text Veni Creator Spiritus, Part 2 treats the closing scene of Faust, in which the seeker of forbidden knowledge finds redemption.
Mahler once told his fellow-composer Sibelius that a symphony must be like the world: it must embrace everything. He might well have echoed the words of Walt Whitman that a symphony should “contain multitudes” – all of which makes it a good fit for this festival, not least with the monumental forces involved: huge orchestra, two choirs plus children’s choir, eight soloists and offstage brass.
Controversially, perhaps, it was presented in a semi-staged version (director Tom Morris) with a video display (Tal Rosner with lighting designer Ben Ormerod) and some limited action. The chorus, spread round three sides of the auditorium, together with the offstage brass, certainly added to the immersive experience. The soloists, ranged behind the orchestra, were rather up against it, but Sarah Wegener, Emma Bell, Jennifer France, Christine Rice, Jennifer Johnston, Tomasz Konieczny and Derek Welton all excelled themselves. The sole tenor, Andrew Staples, negotiated the stratospheric regions of the vocal firmament tirelessly.
The film was projected on three screens, along with single-line summaries of the text: enough to give the gist. In Part 1 it featured natural phenomena such as tidal waves and blazing suns: cosmic, but – a couple of stunning moments aside – largely generic imagery of the screensaver variety that may or may not have enhanced the listener’s reception of text and music.
Part 2 showed us Faust now beyond the grave but oddly not in a “blue vault of heaven”. The drama came alive, however, when Konieczny (Pater Ecstaticus) and Welton (Pater Profundus) came to the front of the stage exhorting Faust’s soul on its journey. Later, the grouping of the three penitent women was effective, as was the appearance of the Faust figure (the actor Tristan Sturrock) from the film now onstage to react to the prayerful pleading of a fourth penitent, once his lover, Gretchen. Most arresting of all was the appearance of Mater Gloriosa high above the stage, illuminated celestially against a backdrop of organ pipes, and the leading of Faust “on high”, through the audience, by the materialised form of “das Ewig-Weibliche” (the eternal womanly).
The execution of the score, by the London Philharmonic and the various choirs, under the baton of Edward Gardner, was impressively accurate, dramatically vibrant, indeed thrilling at the climaxes of each part. It was a five-star performance and if the visuals were not consistently on the same level, it nevertheless added up to a spectacular event offering the hope of redemption for the South Bank Centre itself.
Multitudes at the Southbank Centre continues to May 3
