Van Gogh and Mahler in parallel universes
The Australian
Graham Strahle
Songs from the Yellow Bedroom.
Australian Youth Orchestra. Diego Masson, conductor and David Wenham, actor.
SOME ideas look good on paper, but do not quite work in
practice. Interspersing readings from Van Gogh's letters with Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) sounds like an intriguing
idea. The artist and composer were almost contemporaries and similarly immersed
in themes of nature, death and despair. Further, both shared a particular
fascination with Asian artistic traditions, as borne out in the influence of
Japanese prints on Van Gogh and in Mahler's choice of Chinese poems as the
basis of his song cycle.
But the question is whether a meaningful link can really be
made between these two figures. Director Adam Cook, fulfilling a vision of the
late theatre director Richard Wherrett to undertake
this project, certainly poses the question and makes one think about it.
Delivered with engrossing conviction by actor David Wenham,
the readings laid bare Van Gogh's passionate idealism, his love of colour and nature, and his knowledge of his encroaching
insanity. But juxtaposed against Mahler's music, the readings only served to
highlight fundamental differences of personality and artistic purpose.
What became clear was that Van Gogh and Mahler are two
parallel but dissimilar creative minds. The former is a fragile, heart-driven
ego and recluse who finds in nature the richness of human experience. By
comparison Mahler's art is more intellectual and symbolic: he uses the idea of
nature as a metaphor for what humanity has lost, and he does so with irony.
Tenor Keith Lewis's singing in three of the songs generally
captured the manically intense quality of Mahler's vocal writing, but it was
too operatic in style and tended to gloss over nuances of meaning in the words.
This was a pity because one naturally wanted to explore this dimension to find
possible resonances with the Van Gogh readings. Varying her tone expressively, mezzosoprano Bernadette Cullen offered a more intimate view
of Mahler's responsiveness to text; and her singing in Farewell, emphasising the song's implicit death wish, was able to
highlight perhaps the only thing that Mahler and Van Gogh had in common: their
preoccupation with morbidity.
If nothing else, this performance demanded a sense of colour in the orchestral playing, and in this regard the
Australian Youth Orchestra excelled themselves. With
Diego Masson at the helm, the 96 young musicians performed with remarkable
vividness and control over Mahler's complex writing, both in the song cycle and
in the adagio from his 10th Symphony.