Mahler's symphonies continue to dominate the concert schedules, ushering in the 21st century much as they saw out the 20th, and capturing, perhaps, the uncertain mood of our times. Two of them have received an almost disproportionate number of outings of late: the Second, with its vision of renewal after apocalyptic collapse, and the Ninth, portraying humanity's tenacious adherence to life in the face of terminal decline.
Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra have turned to the latter, coming up with a blistering, engrossing performance in the process, though one which, whether by accident or design, is not always interpretatively coherent.
Rattle, startlingly, splits the work in two at its halfway mark, offering us conflicting experiences. The first two movements combine emotion with a certain dispassion. They form the musical equivalent of the Spectacular Bodies exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, as Rattle strips the skin from the music to expose the skeletal frame, membranes and viscera that lie beneath. There's no Romantic plushness, no comfortable cushioning, only an unblinking stare into the depths.
The first movement alternates between seismic laceration and a queasy polyphony, in which the individual instrumental lines seem to course independently of each other, rather than presenting us with some form of interaction. Antiphonally placed strings emphasise the moments of vacuity. The ländler-cum-minuet that follows has the incisiveness of a machine, a grotesque clockwork precision that pushes relentlessly onwards. This is Mahler as proto-modernist. The shuttling tone colours anticipate Schoenberg. The malign, fractured world of Berg's Wozzeck, with its depiction of the fag end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is in the offing.
When he gets to the third movement, however, Rattle brings us up with a jolt. The detachment has vanished, and in its place is an in-your-face emotionalism of searing viscerality. The music careers all over the place, dragging you after it in its inexorable grip, while the squealing clarinets and flutter-tongued brass set your teeth on edge. Rattle plunges into the final Adagio without pause, remaining ferociously inward and powerful, until the drooping string glissandi herald the ebbing away of consciousness and the final passage into silence.
The whole may not quite be cohesive, but it has tremendous passion. The intensity of Rattle's commitment is never for a second in doubt. During the first movement, he let go of his baton which went flying into the second violins, but he maintained the momentum by conducting with hands crooked like talons. The LSO responded fervently.
