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Musikfest Berlin Part 4: Mahler the Maximalist
It may not have been the largest orchestra to have ever appeared on the stage of the Philharmonie, but it must certainly have been close. Mahler’s unwieldy, awe-inspiring Third symphony belongs to a small group of works from the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century – other pieces include Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder and Mahler’s own Eighth symphony – that tested late romanticism to destruction by seeing how large it was possible to go. Mahler’s Third calls for more of everything – more double basses, more percussion, more choirs – but rewards the audience commensurately. Contrary to the famous pronouncement of Mies van der Rohe, sometimes more is actually more.
As part of Berlin’s Musikfest, the symphony was given a suitably expansive performance from Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra. Alan Gilbert of the New York Philharmonic stood in for Riccardo Chailly who had been forced to withdraw for health reasons; and while the evening was almost certainly different than it might have been under the distinguished baton of Mr Chailly, Mr Gilbert’s bold interpretation offered plenty of drama and was supported throughout by orchestral playing of the highest standard.
From the opening bars of the first movement, it was apparent that Mr Gilbert had little interest in smoothing over the irregularities and grotesqueries of Mahler’s score. The sudden shifts of dynamic and the exaggerated playing – not a single glissando was allowed to go unheard – lent an undoubtedly visceral quality to the music; but these effects sometimes came at the expense of continuity. Under Mr Gilbert’s direction, the first movement had a stop/start quality that made it seem less a monolithic whole and more a collection of fragments.
Whether or not this is a good thing depends largely on what one looks for in Mahler; the Third symphony is arguably Mahler’s most overtly programmatic work, and the orchestra did an exceptional job of evoking those potent narrative images – the elemental stirrings and distant marches – that are so essential to the world of the symphony. But while there was much to admire in the individual episodes – the quiet section just before the return of the introductory horn theme was beautifully mysterious, while the finale was appropriately grand – the structure of the movement often seemed strung together rather than tightly woven.
The agitated second movement and the excitable third projected a greater coherence of vision; and if there had been any misgivings about the unity of the first movement, they were more than offset by the consistently magnificent playing of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Violins, flutes, clarinets and tambourines all fluttered wonderfully in the opening movement, giving great illumination to Mahler’s evocations of the natural world; the horns, upon whom so much of the first and third movement depend, played with brilliant focus and warmth, and the principal oboe dealt gracefully with his higher-than-average workload.
As for the strings, their playing remained a highlight throughout the evening. The expanded double bass section provided a beautifully muscular underpinning – their contribution was nowhere more impressive than in the final movement – and the violins in the third movement created an exquisite pianissimo haze that was pierced by the pastoral song of the distant posthorn. It is easy to forget just how deeply moving this quiet interlude can be when performed in the stillness of a concert hall.
Moment of the concert in Berlin Philharmonie, September 9th.
© Christian Fanghänel, 2014
Gerhild Romberger opened the fourth movement with a wonderfully chilling ‘O Mensch’; her voice had a great depth of tone and her reading of Nietzsche’s dark warning was suitably grave. The orchestra followed at a pace that was slow and reverent, if occasionally a touch forced and not quite as heavy on the misterioso as one would hope. And the combined forces of the women’s and children’s choirs created a joyous foundation on which the symphony’s shortest (and arguably strangest) movement could rest.
However it was in the final movement that the orchestra would offer their most sustained expression of unity and beauty. The opening few minutes approached the vast ambitions of Mahler’s symphony with the intimacy of a string quartet, and the strings played with such purity of tone that they sounded almost like a wordless choir. As the movement progressed, there were a few instances where Mr Gilbert seemed to conflate volume and tempo, spurring the orchestra to a faster pace to coincide with a particular crescendo, but it was easy to forgive these moments of excitability. When the finale arrived, with its majestic timpani, glowing horns and overwhelmingly large sound, it would have been hard to remain unmoved.
If the Third symphony is Mahler’s most expansive creation, it was also something of an aesthetic cul-de-sac; adding more choirs, more instruments and more movements would have yielded diminishing results and left little room in the concert hall for members of the audience. The maximalism of the third symphony is thus somewhat unique even within a body of symphonic work that was never lacking in outsized ambition; but when the piece is performed by an orchestra as sympathetic to Mahler’s vision as the Gewandhaus, it can still be thrilling in ways that works of a smaller scale will never quite match.
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