Das Klagende Lied: Adrian Partington on the fascination and mysteries of Mahler's astonishing early symphonic work which he conducts at this year's Cheltenham Music Festival

Adrian Partington conducting Mahler's Symphony No. 8 at Gloucester Cathedral as part of the 2022 Cheltenham Music Festival
with South Cotswold Big Sing Group, British Sinfonietta

As part of this year's Cheltenham Music Festival, Adrian Partington will be conducting the British Sinfonietta and the South Cotswold Big Sing Group in Mahler's Das Klagende Lied at Tewkesbury Abbey. Adrian is music director at Gloucester Cathedral, which pays host to this year's Three Choirs Festival, and his concerts with the South Cotswold Big Sing Group have become a feature of Cheltenham Music Festivals where last year they performed Berlioz's Te Deum.

Das Klagende Lied is the earliest of Mahler's large-scale symphonic scores. Mahler wrote his own text based on Der singende Knochen (The singing bone) from the tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. Mahler's first version of Das Klagende Lied was finished in 1880, whilst he was still a student. He submitted it for a competition where Brahms and colleagues on the jury dismissed the work. Mahler then revised it in 1893, but it was not performed, and he revised it further in 1898 with the first performance finally taking place in Vienna in 1901.

Gustav Mahler in 1898

When I asked Adrian why he had chosen Das Klagende Lied he explained that the work offers some of the best examples of Mahler but on a compact canvas. Despite being an early work the music is instantly recognisable as Mahler. Adrian explains that for him, though Mahler's style developed his tools did not, so the work uses the off-stage bands, marches and fanfares that reoccur in his later music, albeit with more sophistication.

The South Cotswold Big Sing Group likes to explore music that choral societies cannot do, and the group was set up in order to explore possibilities for co-operation between choral societies on events which would otherwise be beyond individual societies. In previous years, Adrian has conducted them in works such as Berlioz's Te Deum and Grande Messe des Morts, and Holst's Hymn of Jesus.

Adrian had been involved in two previous performances of Das Klagende Lied, rehearsing with the CBSO for performances by Simon Rattle and back in the 1980s with Worcester Festival Choral Society who performed it with conductor Bernard Keeffe. It is a work that stayed in his mind, a most attractive piece with fresh, interesting music. Also whilst you need a lot of voices, it is not too demanding a piece.

Adrian did a lot of research on the piece and its various versions, consulting Professor Jeremy Barham and the New Critical Edition of Gustav Mahler’s works in order to have a performing version that the festival could afford. The 1880 original is an astonishing work for a teenager, but it includes a prominent role for 18-part off-stage band and in fact this version has never been performed. In 1893 Mahler reduced the work from three to two movements and dispensed with the off-stage band. Nothing happened, and this version does not seem to have been performed. Then Mahler revised it again, keeping the two-movement format but restoring the off-stage band; this revision was wholesale enough to need a new manuscript and has become the standard version.

As Adrian pointed out, one of the big needs of the classical music world is money and an off-stage band of 18 players would cost the festival several thousand pounds, so Adrian was looking for way of doing the work without the off-stage band. On YouTube, he came across a performance from 1972 in Cleveland conducted by Pierre Boulez which did not have an off-stage band. Adrian thought that if it was done then, it could be done again, and he wrote to the Cleveland Orchestra. The orchestra's librarian, Michael Ferraguto discovered a set of parts untouched since 1972. From these, Adrian knows what to cue into the orchestral parts. There are some compromises, some doublings in certain instances, and decisions would have had to be made about what needed doing and almost certainly Pierre Boulez would have had to approve.

Adrian Partington conducting Berlioz's Te Deum at 2025 Cheltenham Music Festivalwith South Cotswold Big Sing Group, British Sinfonietta

This was the 1898 version adapted in 1972 to omit the off-stage band, rather than the 1893 version. The Mahler edition was able to sent Adrian a copy of the 1893 score, and Adrian found it such a joy looking through it, seeing how Mahler had arranged it and exhibiting great artistry in the arrangement. Looking at the 1893 you can see how Mahler's mind was working as he was now a more experience composer. Rather frustratingly the manuscript of the 1893 version is in a museum in New York, it seems never to have been edited and no performing version exists.

Adrian is fascinated by this 1893 version and feels that he has not got to the bottom of it. Why did Mahler go to the effort of working out all those instrumental doublings in order to dispense with the off-stage band, only to abandon this version and restore the band in 1898. And no-one seems to know why? And another curiosity is the question of why no-one has performed that version. Adrian is also curious as to why the new edition was made for Cleveland in 1972. Again it would have been a massive amount of work, but anyone who played it would be long retired, and it is doubtful whether anyone remembers.

For all the marvellous music, Adrian does admit that the story as told in the libretto is somewhat repetitive and that Mahler was right to omit the first movement. But it is amazing how Mahler between the ages of 18 and 20 wrote so fluently and on such a large canvas (90-piece symphony orchestra plus off-stage band) even if the story-telling is poor.

Adrian will have a busy summer as the Three Choirs Festival opens in Gloucester on 25 July, when the opening evening concert sees Adrian conducting the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra in the UK premiere of Gavin Higgins' Fanfare Americana, Elgar's Symphony No.1 and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. This year's festival programme is, Adrian admits, deliberately popular as the festival has had to work had to attract audience back after lockdown. Some of the recent festivals have been adventurous in their programming, so that 2025 included Coleridge-Taylor's The Attonement (written for the 1903 festival), Howells' Hymnus Paradisi, and the premiere of Richard Blackford's The Black Lake. This year they have included more popular pieces and ticket sales have been going well.

Gloucester Cathedral organ case: the only complete 17th century 
cathedral organ case surviving in this country (Photo: Kevin Lewis )

Another feature of this year's festival is that Gloucester Cathedral is getting a new organ. When I spoke to Adrian he said that the new instrument was coming along nicely. The instrument was originally built in 1666 by Thomas Harris and has the only complete 17th century cathedral organ case surviving in this country. Over the next three centuries it was rebuilt and extended by many organ builders including ‘Father’ Henry Willis. Harrison & Harrison rebuilt it again in 1920, and this organ served the Cathedral for fifty years, when it was given a total 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 Festival. Adrian points out that such large-scale organ projects only occur once in a generation, and he feels lucky to be here for it. 

The new organ is being launched with a gala concert on 13 June with organist Thomas Trotter and the BBC National 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 fact that this year the Elgar Society is celebrating its 75th anniversary and backing the Festival most generously, the Festival has scheduled a lot of Elgar both the larger works and smaller ones including Adrian conducting The Dream of Gerontius for the final concert with soloists John Findon, Niamh O'Sullivan and David Ireland. Adrian has been associated with the festival since 1969 when he heard his first performance of The Dream of Gerontius (and the tenor lost his voice). The Three Choirs Festival regularly rotate performances of The Dream of Gerontius, The Kingdom and The Apostles, something that not many organisations do nowadays. 

Adrian worked on The Kingdom when Andrew Davis conducted it at the opening night of the BBC Proms in 2014 with the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. Adrian says that the critics were dismissive of the work after this performance and he wonders whether its religiosity is out of place. You rather do need background Biblical knowledge to make the work completely satisfying, and with the fall off of church attendance this is getting less. Though Adrian does point out that he did the work in Bruges with surtitles, and it was very well received. 

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

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