Some symphonies are performed. Others are lived. Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 — the Resurrection — belongs unmistakably to the latter.
Ahead of their performances on 17th and 18th May at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall, soprano Ying Fang and mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill joined Radio 4 to speak about one of the most monumental works in the orchestral canon. The conversation that followed was as rich and layered as the symphony itself.
An Operatic Soul in Symphonic Form
Karen Cargill was quick to frame Mahler 2 in terms that cut to its emotional core. “It encompasses everything that Mahler wanted to see,” she said. Though Mahler never wrote an opera, Karen believes this symphony reveals the operatic composer he might have been — a storyteller of extraordinary sensitivity, setting text for the voice with an almost tactile understanding of how music can make a listener feel embraced rather than merely observed.
Ying Fang agreed. The symphony, she reflected, is about truth — the voice that speaks up, that reaches toward something beyond the visible world.
From Darkness to Light
The architecture of Mahler 2 is itself a kind of spiritual journey. The first movement is heavy, searching, shadowed by questions of death and what lies beyond. Mahler reportedly asked conductors to pause — for as long as five minutes — before moving forward. It is a moment of collective breath. Of necessary stillness. Yap Van Zweden, the conductor of this Hong Kong Philharmonic performance, honours that tradition, allowing the silence to settle before the music moves toward its extraordinary conclusion.
And what a conclusion. The closing double choruses — life-affirming in text, overwhelming in scale — drew a vivid response from Karen. “There has never been a performance where I haven’t had a tear in my eye,” she said. The sheer mass of sound, two choirs joined in affirmation, carries something that transcends performance. It becomes, briefly, a shared act of belief.
The Voice That Arrives First
Ying Fang carries one of the symphony’s most exposed and tender moments. Her entry in the Fourth Movement — Urlicht, or Primal Light — begins unaccompanied, a semitone below where the orchestra finishes. There is no safety net. Just voice, and silence, and everything it must carry.
The text she sings is a declaration of defiance and grace. A soul in pain is urged aside by an angel, and refuses. I am from God and I shall return to God. Ying described it as a moment of self-determination — a question the music asks of everyone in the room, regardless of faith.
Artists at the Height of Their Powers
Both singers arrive in Hong Kong at remarkable points in their careers. Karen has recently debuted the role of Mother Marie in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, alongside her first performances as Erda in both Das Rheingold and Siegfried — earth-deep roles that demand both power and gravity. Ying, meanwhile, made her role debut as Servilia in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and performed the Brahms Requiem with the New York Philharmonic under Van Zweden.
A Privilege, and a Promise
Hong Kong audiences are, by any measure, fortunate. What arrives on 17th and 18th May is not simply a concert. It is two artists at the peak of their artistry, a conductor of international stature, and a symphony that has moved listeners to tears for more than a century — performed together, for the first time, in this city.
Resurrection has always been about more than its title. On these two evenings, it will be felt.
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Ying Fang & Karen Cargill on Mahler’s Resurrection
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Soprano Ying Fang and mezzo Karen Cargill speak to Radio 4 about performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic.
