Adrian Partington on the fascination and mysteries of Mahler’s astonishing early symphonic work which he conducts at this 12 months’s Cheltenham Music Pageant

Adrian Partington conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 at Gloucester Cathedral as a part of the 2022 Cheltenham Music Pageant with South Cotswold Huge Sing Group, British Sinfonietta

As a part of this 12 months’s Cheltenham Music Pageant, Adrian Partington might be conducting the British Sinfonietta and the South Cotswold Huge Sing Group in Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied at Tewkesbury Abbey. Adrian is music director at Gloucester Cathedral, which pays host to this 12 months’s Three Choirs Pageant, and his live shows with the South Cotswold Huge Sing Group have turn into a characteristic of Cheltenham Music Festivals the place final 12 months they carried out Berlioz’s Te Deum.

Das Klagende Lied is the earliest of Mahler’s large-scale symphonic scores. Mahler wrote his personal textual content based mostly on Der singende Knochen (The singing bone) from the story collected by the Brothers Grimm. Mahler’s first model of Das Klagende Lied was completed in 1880, while he was nonetheless a scholar. He submitted it for a contest the place Brahms and colleagues on the jury dismissed the work. Mahler then revised it in 1893, however it was not carried out, and he revised it additional in 1898 with the primary efficiency lastly happening in Vienna in 1901.

Gustav Mahler in 1898

After I requested Adrian why he had chosen Das Klagende Lied he defined that the work presents a number of the finest examples of Mahler however on a compact canvas. Regardless of being an early work the music is immediately recognisable as Mahler. Adrian explains that for him, although Mahler’s fashion developed his instruments didn’t, so the work makes use of the off-stage bands, marches and fanfares that reoccur in his later music, albeit with extra sophistication.

The South Cotswold Huge Sing Group likes to discover music that choral societies can’t do, and the group was arrange as a way to discover prospects for co-operation between choral societies on occasions which might in any other case be past particular person societies. In earlier years, Adrian has performed them in works comparable to Berlioz’s Te Deum and Grande Messe des Morts, and Holst’s Hymn of Jesus.

Adrian had been concerned in two earlier performances of Das Klagende Lied, rehearsing with the CBSO for performances by Simon Rattle and again within the Nineteen Eighties with Worcester Pageant Choral Society who carried out it with conductor Bernard Keeffe. It’s a work that stayed in his thoughts, a most engaging piece with recent, fascinating music. Additionally while you want lots of voices, it isn’t too demanding a bit.

Adrian did lots of analysis on the piece and its varied variations, consulting Professor Jeremy Barham and the New Vital Version of Gustav Mahler’s works as a way to have a performing model that the pageant might afford. The 1880 authentic is an astonishing work for an adolescent, however it features a outstanding position for 18-part off-stage band and in reality this model has by no means been carried out. In 1893 Mahler lowered the work from three to 2 actions and distributed with the off-stage band. Nothing occurred, and this model doesn’t appear to have been carried out. Then Mahler revised it once more, protecting the two-movement format however restoring the off-stage band; this revision was wholesale sufficient to wish a brand new manuscript and has turn into the usual model.

As Adrian identified, one of many large wants of the classical music world is cash and an off-stage band of 18 gamers would value the pageant a number of thousand kilos, so Adrian was in search of manner of doing the work with out the off-stage band. On YouTube, he got here throughout a efficiency from 1972 in Cleveland performed by Pierre Boulez which didn’t have an off-stage band. Adrian thought that if it was accomplished then, it could possibly be accomplished once more, and he wrote to the Cleveland Orchestra. The orchestra’s librarian, Michael Ferraguto found a set of elements untouched since 1972. From these, Adrian is aware of what to cue into the orchestral elements. There are some compromises, some doublings in sure situations, and choices would have needed to be made about what wanted doing and nearly definitely Pierre Boulez would have needed to approve.

Adrian Partington conducting Berlioz’s Te Deum at 2025 Cheltenham Music Festivalwith South Cotswold Huge Sing Group, British Sinfonietta (Photograph: ©Michael Whitefoot)

This was the 1898 model tailored in 1972 to omit the off-stage band,
slightly than the 1893 model. The Mahler version was capable of despatched Adrian
a replica of the 1893 rating, and Adrian discovered it such a pleasure trying
by it, seeing how Mahler had organized it and exhibiting nice
artistry within the association. Trying on the 1893 you possibly can see how
Mahler’s thoughts was working as he was now a extra expertise composer.
Reasonably frustratingly the manuscript of the 1893 model is in a museum
in New York, it appears by no means to have been edited and no performing
model exists.

Adrian is fascinated by this 1893 model and feels that he has not obtained
to the underside of it. Why did Mahler go to the hassle of figuring out all
these instrumental doublings as a way to dispense with the off-stage
band, solely to desert this model and restore the band in 1898.
And no-one appears to know why? And one other curiosity is the query of
why no-one has carried out that model. Adrian can be curious as to why
the brand new version was made for Cleveland in 1972. Once more it might have been a
huge quantity of labor, however anybody who performed it might be lengthy retired,
and it’s uncertain whether or not anybody remembers.

For all of the marvellous music, Adrian does admit that the story as informed within the libretto is
considerably repetitive and that Mahler was proper to omit the primary
motion. However it’s superb how Mahler between the ages of 18 and 20
wrote so fluently and on such a big canvas (90-piece symphony orchestra
plus off-stage band) even when the story-telling is poor.

Adrian may have a busy summer time because the Three Choirs Pageant opens in Gloucester on 25 July, when the opening night live performance sees Adrian conducting the Three Choirs Pageant Refrain and Philharmonia Orchestra within the UK premiere of Gavin Higgins‘ Fanfare Americana, Elgar’s Symphony No.1 and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. This 12 months’s pageant programme is, Adrian admits, intentionally standard because the pageant has needed to work needed to appeal to viewers again after lockdown. A number of the current festivals have been adventurous of their programming, in order that 2025 included Coleridge-Taylor’s The Attonement (written for the 1903 pageant), Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi, and the premiere of Richard Blackford‘s The Black Lake. This 12 months they’ve included extra standard items and ticket gross sales have been going properly.

Gloucester Cathedral organ case: the one full seventeenth century  cathedral organ case surviving on this nation (Photograph: Kevin Lewis )

One other characteristic of this 12 months’s pageant is that Gloucester Cathedral is getting a brand new organ. After I spoke to Adrian he mentioned that the brand new instrument was coming alongside properly. The instrument was initially in-built 1666 by Thomas Harris and has the one full seventeenth century cathedral organ case surviving on this nation. Over the following three centuries it was rebuilt and prolonged by many organ builders together with ‘Father’ Henry Willis. Harrison & Harrison rebuilt it once more in 1920, and this organ served the Cathedral for 50 years, when it was given a complete redesign by Norman and Beard, then being overhauled in 1999 by Nicholson. Nicholson & Co Ltd are working to refurbish and renew the Gloucester organ in time for the Three Choirs Pageant. Adrian factors out that such large-scale organ tasks solely happen as soon as in a era, and he feels fortunate to be right here for it. 

The brand new organ is being launched with a gala live performance on 13 June with organist Thomas Trotter and the BBC Nationwide Orchestra of Wales performing three works with organ, Eugene Gigout’s Grande Choeur Dialogué (arr. Ropartz),
Jongen’s Symphonie Concertante and Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 in C minor (“Organ Symphony”).

Supported by the truth that this 12 months the Elgar Society is celebrating its seventy fifth anniversary and backing the Pageant most generously, the Pageant has scheduled lots of Elgar each the bigger works and smaller ones together with Adrian conducting The Dream of Gerontius for the ultimate live performance with soloists John Findon, Niamh O’Sullivan and David Eire. Adrian has been related to the pageant since 1969 when he heard his first efficiency of The Dream of Gerontius (and the tenor misplaced his voice). The Three Choirs Pageant frequently rotate performances of The Dream of Gerontius, The Kingdom and The Apostles, one thing that not many organisations do these days. 

Adrian labored on The Kingdom when Andrew Davis performed it on the opening night time of the BBC Proms in 2014 with the BBC Symphony Refrain and Orchestra. Adrian says that the critics had been dismissive of the work after this efficiency and he wonders whether or not its religiosity is misplaced. You slightly do want background Biblical data to make the work fully satisfying, and with the autumn off of church attendance that is getting much less. Although Adrian does level out that he did the work in Bruges with surtitles, and it was very properly acquired. 

• 13 June 2026 – Gloucester Cathedral Organ Pageant: Gala Live performance – Eugene Gigout, Jongen, Saint-Saëns – BBC Nationwide Orchestra of Wales, Thomas Trotter, Adrian Partington – Gloucester Cathedral
• 4 July 2026 – Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied, Brahms’ Tutorial Pageant Overture, Bruckner’s Te Deum – Lee Bissett, Claudia Huckle, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Adrian Smith, Cotswold Huge Sing Group, British Sinfonia, Adrian Partington – Tewkesbury Abbey – Cheltenham Music Pageant
• 25 July 2026 – Gavin Higgins: Fanfare Americana, Elgar: Symphony No. 1, Walton: Belshazzar’s Feast – David Stout, Three Choirs Pageant Refrain, Philharmonia Orchestra, Adrian Partington – Gloucester Cathedral – Three Choirs Pageant opening live performance
• 1 August 2026 – Wagner: Prelude to Parsifal, Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius – John Findon, Niamh O’Sullivan, David Eire, Three Choirs Pageant Refrain,  Philharmonia Orchestra, Adrian Partington – Gloucester Cathedral – Three Choirs Pageant closing live performance