I have to make comparisons. Even the most sympathetic critic observes and then contextualizes, by framing those observations in comparison to others.
On Friday May 22nd Mandle Cheung conducted his orchestra, the Mandle Philharmonic, in a performance of Gustav Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, known as his Resurrection symphony; I heard Mandle conduct the Toronto Symphony in a performance of the same work, at Roy Thomson Hall last summer. I’ve been listening to the work since I was a teen, sometimes live with the TSO, or recordings.
Mandle is a successful tech entrepreneur who paid the TSO for the privilege of conducting them last year. But he has conducted his own orchestra, the Mandle Philharmonic for several years, at least seventeen concerts as far as I know. His choice to hire the TSO made that concert last year into an event, newsworthy in all sorts of ways, some that persist to this day.
Erika asked me the questions that subtly underlie any orchestral concert, but especially when someone like Mandle comes along. She asked: what does a conductor actually do, could the orchestra play without a conductor? One wonders at any concert: how important is the conductor? Because of course the violins, the tuba, the harp, and all the others are reading and playing their parts that they have rehearsed.
So please excuse me as I make my comparisons, not just a dry academic exercise but a way of noticing and enjoying the beauty of a view out the window, a sunset, a glass of wine: or even a concert. As children we delight in things and experiences in the moment, but as we have more & more memories, our experience is deepened with the ability to remember and compare. And we may anticipate because the film or the symphony is one we have seen before, we know the big climax is coming, etc.
Mahler’s 2nd Symphony should feel like an event. It’s one of the longer works we hear in concerts, requiring a chorus, vocal soloists and a big orchestra.
I remember encountering this work at a time in my youth when I was agnostic, drawn in by Mahler’s message that would seem to say “we are all going to heaven”, that there is no hell, just forgiveness. We go through four movements that set up an enormous dramatic last movement. In that finale we hear something like judgment day, recalling that the Requiem includes a Dies Irae, day of wrath that for successive composers challenged them to paint a sonic landscape of that day of judgment, from Mozart to Berlioz to Verdi, plus lots more I didn’t mention. Mahler was an erudite composer who knew them all intimately as an orchestral conductor, likely coming to his version of the end times with all those other versions in his head. For me, at this point of my youth, it was the opening part of the finale that moved me. When the chorus would come in to proclaim resurrection? In those days I found it unconvincing, possibly because I was unready for it, possibly because there was something missing in me. All I know is that my experience of this symphony has changed over the years, from an agnostic to a church-going musician and a believer in an afterlife. Mahler’s spirituality now aligns nicely with mine.
A big change happened for me, when I had the chance to perform the 4th movement myself, as an offertory at Hillcrest Church in Toronto. I was aware that part of Mahler’s subtext was his own religion, as a Jewish Bohemian (meaning the place he came from in what is now the Czech Republic), facing discrimination professionally. The text for Urlicht, the song that is Mahler’s 4th movement includes the description of an angel blocking the way to heaven. The singer says that they will not be turned away, but will get to heaven.
A light came on for me, watching a partially disabled person perform this song, forced by physical challenges to sing from an awkward position in the choir loft, while trying not to block the collection during the offertory. It blew me away that we were singing about acceptance even as we were making her performance conditional, asking someone jump through hoops, who walked with a cane & rode Wheeltrans to church.
Watching Mireille Lebel sing this with the TSO, with Mandle Cheung trying to conduct an orchestra who were rumoured to be resistant to their conductor? it was if my brain exploded at the irony.
I started to cry watching someone sing about an angel blocking the way to heaven, as I saw it being re-enacted on the stage before me. I reported it, and perhaps my enthusiasm has been misread. I was powerfully moved when I picked up on the subtext of Mahler’s own life in the creation of this work, feeling that Mandle faced comparable challenges & possible rejection. And by now people may be tired of my story. But it’s a big part of my context when I come to speak of the May 22nd experience at Meridian Arts Centre, in the George Weston Recital Hall.
I have a few simple observations to make, and they include comparisons for context.
I think Mandle does indeed have an interpretation to offer, an approach to this symphony. That’s important because, watching the TSO performance last year, at times it seemed that he was riding a horse that was trying to throw him, an ensemble that may not have been happy with the gig. I’m not sure though. It may simply have been that Mandle was physically challenged by what he was doing, conducting with such a clear beat for the 80 minutes of the piece that he may have been exhausted. Part of that is age, but part of that is also about the politics, verging on a kind of gamesmanship, of conducting.
For example I recall reading Astrid Varnay’s frustration with Herbert von Karajan, whose beat was sometimes impossible to see, suggesting a bit of a passive-aggressive power trip. If I place that alongside what I saw Mandle doing, I wonder. Did Mandle really have to conduct so boisterously? I think I would fault the orchestra, that the conductor would be working so hard. Shouldn’t the sections pull together, and the section leader perhaps keep things together without requiring the conductor to do so much?
But I saw several places in the performance that were consistent with what we heard from Mandle both in his TSO concert and in leading Mandle Phil playing Mahler’s 4th and Beethoven’s 9th on Youtube. The tendency to suddenly speed up in order to emphasize a climactic section with a rush, such as the conclusion of the 1st movement, or in the fortissimo passages of the third movement, is something I would identify as a consistent part of Mandle’s style. I want to underline this as evidence of a conductor who is for all intents and purposes, leading his orchestra.
That is the good news. Mandle favours a quicker tempo for Mahler than many of the first conductors who popularized him, thinking especially of Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer, both of whom met the composer in their youth, and could claim that their slower readings had some claim to authenticity. That being said I far prefer a quicker approach, notwithstanding the challenges that imposes on the players.
And so you may have seen social media posts reminding us that the orchestra is comprised of professionals from the Opera company, ballet and even the TSO, that this is one of four professional orchestras in the Toronto area (COC, NBC, TSO). I think that perhaps they left out Tafelmusik (a fifth professional orchestra) but never mind. While they’re all professional players who play in other orchestras, I think it’s timely with our FIFA matches coming up, to observe that plucking professionals out of their sections into new groups does not necessarily turn them into a team. We’ve seen brilliant players who fail on the world stage because the new aggregation of talent lacks cohesion. I hope Mandle will recognize that this is a friendly analogy, comparing Mandle Philharmonic to a World Cup team.
Mandle has some very good ideas that I really liked. The score for this symphony asks for an intermission between the first and second movements, a stipulation that is never met. I believe Mahler wanted us to understand the first movement as the struggles of life, recalling that at first the composer composed the piece years before, as a single stand-alone movement, titled “Todtenfeier” or now usually written as Totenfeier: a funeral celebration, celebrating life & death.
By having the chorus who are required for the final movement plus the soloists who are in the last 2 movements, make their entrance after the first mvmt, Mandle accomplished a bit of a break, as Mahler wanted.
Another great idea, that Joseph So pointed to (Joe was sitting beside me), is the soft entry of the chorus singing their first words from a seated position.
It’s a great idea, because the moment when a hundred or more singers stand up, you have a bit of a thunderous effect, and conflicting with the softness of the moment. I think I’ve seen choruses stand to begin the last movement, which is one of Mahler’s loudest moments.
Speaking of which, I almost giggled, worried for angelic Alex Hetherington, who had just finished her beautiful fourth movement song, and behind her all hell was breaking out, aka the opening passages of the finale. I was impressed that she never lost her composure.
So let me finally place this whole thing into context. When the TSO played this symphony I was powerfully moved by that moment in Urlicht, as I said, and otherwise was watching Mandle negotiate the experience, hoping he’d make it through. This time in North York I was enthusiastic, ready to experience the music, enjoying the view from a really good seat near the front of the George Weston hall, which might have the best acoustics of any space in Toronto: which is a mixed blessing. I contrast my religious experience last year to one of mixed results this time, perhaps wanting too much.
I found myself astonished by the number of people not just looking at their smartphones, but actively trying to record parts of the concert. I don’t know whether this is just so normal nowadays that people don’t realize it’s a kind of theft. As Alex Hetherington started Urlicht, the person right in front of me started recording, lifting their (expletive deleted) phone up close to my sight-line. I was tempted to imagine smacking it like T-ball, wondering how far I could send it: which of course would possibly injure someone, get me kicked out, disrupt the performance.
But in case it’s not clear, my performance was already disrupted! Later in Urlicht, as an employee came down the aisle (something they did repeatedly) to stop someone recording on their phone, I pointed to the philistine in front of me, who was concealing their phone at that point (in their lap). So excuse me, I was watching a concert in 2026, recognizing that maybe the audience were simply doing what is normal for them especially given that the request to shut off phones was relatively soft- spoken.
Mandle may have a strong beat, but the orchestra was not always together, as my FIFA analogy should make clear. I found I loved the first movement without reservation. The second was perhaps the best of the five, the strings responding beautifully, the soft serenade interrupted by a darker episode before we go back to the main melody. I admire what Mandle was aiming for in the third movement, particularly his ambitious passages going faster for the loudest music, that the players didn’t fully follow. I’m not sure if more rehearsal with a kind conductor such as Mandle would help, when it’s really up to the players to pay better attention. Similarly in the finale, there were several times that members of sections were off by a bit, but Mandle managed to right the ship and keep them together. The ending was superb.
I see that Mandle Phil will play this symphony again on July 24th at an outdoor venue: which might be a better experience, given my travails with the phones around me. I know I need to chill, relax, go with the flow. If this had been the RBC Amphitheatre at Ontario Place where they’ll do it in July, perhaps I’d feel better. I remember seeing the TSO play Mahler’s 7th at the old Ontario Place concert venue back in the 1980s, and even debating the quality of the piece with Carl Morey & Neil Crory, both of whom said the problem with the concert was Mahler, not the TSO. I wonder if their crankiness was a bit like mine from May 22nd, distractions ruining my rapture..? I recall how the soft propeller planes & boats blended into the orchestral sound (including the noise-makers Mahler builds into that score). Maybe it will be better in July, accepting the background distractions & noise, children crying, cars and planes as a backdrop: especially knowing that Doug Ford wants to land jets at the Island Airport. Maybe they will rename the Billy Bishop Airport (named for a biplane hero) “Buzz Lightyear’s launchpad”. In case I’m not being clear, I am very upset about the provincial government’s plans, and am waiting for the federal government to rescue our beautiful waterfront, that should be noisy with life but OMG not deafening.
If you want to follow Mandle Philharmonic, information and tickets about their future concerts can be found here.
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