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Times

LPO/Gardner review — Mahler's Eighth Symphony, with added visuals

Mahler conducted plenty of operas but never wrote one. He probably thought he had put enough drama, life, love and mortal terror into his symphonies. The question raised by this concert-hall staging of Mahler's gigantic Eighth Symphony — that philosophically eccentric but sonically overwhelming amalgam of an ancient Catholic hymn and the last part of Goethe's Faust — was whether all that symphonic anguish and ecstasy is enhanced or confused by stage movements and big-screen video images. It's fair to say that the musical performance — by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, the London Symphony Chorus and Tiffin Boys' Choir under Edward Gardner's high-voltage direction — would probably have been just as thrilling if absolutely nothing had happened visually. With the two adult choruses