Gustave Mahler, Gerhard Markson, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, hundreds of singers of all ages - tonight the Tallaght Basketball Arena will play host to a cosmic dance of life, writes Arminta Wallace
From the moment they open their mouths, it's obvious that this isn't just any choral rehearsal: it's a megachoir. The steady trickle of people which has been arriving at Sandford Park Church in Ranelagh has, slowly but surely, turned into a powerful flow.
"Which section are you with?" they're asked, as they hesitate in the hallway - and then they're directed to one side of the aisle or the other, where the pews are filling fast. And still they come. Some 250 people are due to turn up tonight - and this is just Choir One. Another 250, Choir Two, are rehearsing somewhere else.
"Basses? This way, please. . ." Altos. Tenors. Sopranos. The combined forces of RTÉ Philharmonic, Tallaght Choral Society, Our Lady's Choral Society, Dún Laoghaire Choral Society, the Guinness Choir, the Lassus Scholars and the kids of RTÉ Cór na nÓg, to be precise. Choirs are a jolly lot, and there's a good deal of banter. Eventually the conductor steps up to the lectern. The banter stops at once. Into the sudden hush the conductor says: "It's going to take over your lives for the next couple of weeks, so be prepared for that."
Nobody flinches. Tonight's rehearsal will last for three hours, and it's the third this week. He tells them where he wants to start, and raises his baton. And a tsunami of sound washes over the sunny summer evening.
When you stop to think about it, the amazing thing is not that Mahler's gigantic Eighth Symphony (known as the Symphony of a Thousand because it takes damn near that many people to get it airborne) is being performed in Dublin. The amazing thing is that, by way of a climax to the complete cycle of Mahler symphonies being performed this season at the National Concert Hall by the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra, it's being done for the second time in recent years. Many of these singers took part in a performance of the work in Dublin as part of the celebrations for the 400th anniversary of Trinity College Dublin in 1992.
You'd think people would say okay, been there and done that. Never again. You'd think sponsors would flee with their jackets over their heads. Because the logistics of this thing are awesome. To find spaces big enough to rehearse the choirs in is, to begin with, a nightmare in a city where space of any kind is at a premium. Add in a massive orchestra and eight soloists for good measure, and a performance at Tallaght Basketball Arena (because that's the only place big enough to contain it all), and you can see why Mahler described the finale of his symphony as a cosmic dance of life, "the whole universe beginning to ring and resound".
And that's without counting the conductors. There are three involved in this feature - James Cavanagh, from the Royal Irish Academy of Music, of whom more anon; Mark Duley, of the RTÉ Philharmonic, who's directing the rehearsal for Choir One, and RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra maestro Gerhard Markson, who will be in charge on the big night.
"WHAT I THINK is extraordinary," says Duley, "is that Mahler wrote this symphony in such a short space of time. It was like he was possessed. He sketched it out in a little over three weeks, and the text for the first movement apparently came to him in a flash. And that's the feeling that you get running through the music: white-heat composition."
As Duley wryly points out, however, artistic inspiration doesn't necessarily make allowances for vocal trickiness.
"Harmonically, this symphony is very adventurous indeed," he says. "It's quite a challenge to negotiate around some of the particularly crunchy harmonic moves. For something like this, you're also bringing together choirs which have a very different approach to - for example - pronunciation. So we've got a lot of work to do to come up with something which sounds unified."
On the phone from his home in Germany, maestro Markson agrees.
"First, you have to get the whole thing organised. That's the magic word," he says. On the other hand, he adds, the composer - a full-time conductor himself - has calibrated his special musical effects very carefully. "If you look at the dynamic details alone, it's amazing how many instructions Mahler writes in every bar: 'forte', 'fortissimo', 'sforzato', 'piano', in just one bar. As a conductor, he knew exactly what he had to write down in order to produce the effect he wanted. Three hundred years ago, Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert would write 'fortissimo' for the entire orchestra and then, naturally, you won't hear a low clarinet unless you do something about it. With Mahler you don't have to do very much."
Except, of course, control this enormous assemblage of individuals and mould them into a grand unified force. Which, according to Markson, is what the symphony is all about - and not just for the performers, but for the audience as well.
"The most touching moment, I find," he says, "is the very, very end. Imagine 600 singers in the basketball arena singing the last verses from Goethe's Faust, to the accompaniment of strings. After an hour and 20 minutes of musical bombast and megalomania, all of a sudden it becomes very simple, and it's about what our existence is about. This whole passing away - dying - is just a description of something else. And then it builds to a glorious, optimistic finale."
Not everyone is convinced of Mahler's genius. Dissenters use words such as "tacky" to describe his vast assemblages built of scraps of melody, some of which are used once and tossed aside. But there can be no doubt that the 100-year-old Eighth Symphony, which was premiered in Vienna in 1907, is music for the modern age: neurotic, restless, self-absorbed.
"Mahler used to say his music was too modern," says Markson. "People didn't understand it yet. But he was not the only one. Bruckner had big problems. Beethoven had big problems - remember the reception of the Third Symphony, the Eroica? They screamed because it was longer than usual. And shortly after the premiere of Mahler's Eighth, there was the scandal of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring premiere - and it's now a regular runner in the concert hall."
IN THE MUSIC room of Tallaght Community School, across the road from the basketball arena, another group of musicians is assembling. There are 17 of them, boys and girls, ranging in age from first year all the way to Leaving Cert. Two flautists, a guitar section, a drummer (female), a pianist, and an array of percussionists. A conductor gives them the beat, and off they go: "Come, Holy Spirit . . ." It's the Veni, Creator Spiritus, the text used by Mahler for the first movement of the Eighth Symphony. These kids have scrutinised it, taken out the bits they find most relevant, and composed their own completely original piece.
"They've come up with their own ideas based on the syllables of the words, or the emotional resonances, or whatever," says conductor James Cavanagh, who is giving the third in a series of workshops at the school in conjunction with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and music teacher Thérèse McNamee. "The idea is, first of all, to get their sense of creativity going. They also have to work together as a team, which isn't easy for such disparate age groups. And as a musical group they have to do what they they're told to do when maybe they'd rather not - which is what happens when you work in an orchestra.
"The second element is that they'll be brought along to a rehearsal in the basketball arena, and sit in on a bit of that, and then, when the break comes, they'll meet Gerhard Markson. And they'll have a walk through the stage and meet the orchestra, who'll have a talk with them as well."
Today they get a talk from jeans-clad saxophone player Kevin Hanafin, who provides a virtuoso demonstration, lets them have a go on his glittering instruments, and gives it loads when he joins in with Come, Holy Spirit. It comes as no surprise when Thérèse McNamee explains that many of these self-possessed, friendly kids are hoping to make careers as professional musicians. How does their conductor reckon they've coped with the task at hand?
"They're astoundingly terrific" is Cavanagh's verdict. "Mahler Eight is difficult for anybody to get to grips with, which is why I'm taking a text-based approach rather than pushing too much of the music at them too soon. If you swamp them, you put them off. At the same time, we don't dumb it down. There's a thin line there. We have total respect for what they want to do, and they've responded in spades."
I can hear this for myself as I listen to the group brainstorm musical ideas for its next move: a Tallaght Community School setting of the finale of Goethe's Faust, complete with solemn funeral march, demonic attacks whose ferocity would make Buffy the Vampire Slayer blanch, and the gradual triumph of serenity as the soul of the hero soars heavenwards.
Better yet, as I leave I hear an exuberant jam session breaking out around the drum kit. Another few small - but significant - steps in Mahler's cosmic dance of life.
• The RTE National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gerhard Markson, will perform Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand at Tallaght Basketball Arena tonight, in association with Anglo Irish Bank. The performance will be without an interval, starting at 8pm and ending at approximately 9.25pm. The number of tickets available is limited - information from the venue booking office on 01-4597500