Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra/Dudamel review – epic Mahler is exhilarating but overwhelming

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Say what you will about El Sistema (and controversies continue over the political status and inner workings of the 50-year-old youth music programme), but one thing remains unequivocal: the ferocious energy of its flagship Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela,For the first of two performances at Barbican as part of an anniversary European tour with its music director Gustavo Dudamel, the stage was as packed as the auditorium,Mahler’s Symphony No 3 is his longest work, scored for a massive orchestra and its musical ambitions sprawl weightily,In the orchestra’s hands, the score quivered and growled from the get-go,The string sound was almost airless in its density.

Five clarinets – bells up – found something nightmarish in Mahler’s fanfaric chirruping.The first climax in the symphony-length first movement was deafening, crested by a cymbal crash of immense, shattering force.Dudamel drove the ensemble like someone with a Grand Prix title to defend.The movement’s final chords had the vicious clarity of a guillotine blade.This was bracing, exhilarating, immersive.

It was also too much, too soon.The five remaining movements are shorter, but there’s still an extraordinary distance left to travel – and volume is not a gift that keeps on giving.Nor is intensity.Even the quietest passages were loaded with the potential of a tightly coiled symphonic spring, ready to release at any second.The minuet of the second movement was neurotically precise, its graciousness served as if through anxiously gritted teeth.

(The atmosphere was contagious: a smattering of applause at its close was furiously shushed.) Mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa’s solo turn in the fourth and fifth movements brought real beauty of tone but seemed to hail from a different, lighter performance.The choral singing in the fifth was, similarly, too often overwhelmed by the orchestra.Only in the sixth movement was there finally, briefly, some space.But the orchestra sounded exhausted, its tone quality and ensemble faltering, before Dudamel gathered them up for yet another impossibly loud dash to the finish.

The SBSO’s Barbican residency ends today.Both concerts are available on BBC Sounds.

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