Review | Mighty Mahler Resurrection symphony shows HK Phil’s growth under Jaap van Zweden’s baton

You rarely find works by Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler on the same programme. It’s as if there is an either-or dynamic whereby, like choosing a sports team, a listener can only root for one of these late-Romantic titans.

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert last weekend was an exception. By contrasting the two composers’ distinct musical personalities – the village Catholic and the Viennese Jew, the church organist and the cosmopolitan conductor – a dialogue was established, albeit the two Bruckner a cappella sacred works performed by the 60-member Netherlands Radio Choir took up only 10 minutes of the 90-minute programme.

The HK Phil’s current music director, Jaap van Zweden, can hardly be credited with bringing Mahler to Hong Kong – that honour goes to his predecessor Edo de Waart, who made performing Mahler’s symphony a priority during his years on the podium – but Saturday’s performance marked a clear evolution. It was testament to the orchestra’s growth.

It’s one thing to scale a summit as a display of physical endurance; doing it with grace and style is another matter entirely. Much of the credit for this surely goes to van Zweden’s early years as concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, one of a handful of orchestras Mahler himself conducted and whose conductor Willem Mengelberg, a contemporary of the composer, was an early champion of his music and established a tradition of Mahler performance.

Moment by moment, though, it was hard to call Saturday’s performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection” graceful. Exciting, yes, perhaps rambunctious, with surprising tempo changes and a tendency to exploit some particularly raucous tone colours in the wind and brass. And yet, as wilful as some of the playing seemed at the moment, none of these episodes distracted from the work’s underlying tension.