Funny how many composers haven't stopped after 9 symphonies. All the same, Mahler was by no means the only composer who saw the significance of reaching that number. And just like the final Ninths of Beethoven, Schubert, and Bruckner, the Ninth Symphony of Mahler reveals a vision that transcends the world of here and now in ways that resist logical explanation.
Among all of Mahler's symphonies, no other is so much dominated by the sound of the string sections. The first and last movements, both slow, have almost all their melodic material announced and developed by the strings. Only in the two middle movements do we encounter the blasting brasses and shrieking woodwinds so characteristic of this composer.
I'm making a big point of this because the last time I heard Mahler's Ninth played live was before Roy Thomson Hall was renovated 12 years ago. The pre-renovation hall, with its cavernous roof, hard concrete walls, and carpeted floors was no friend of the strings, and in those days the Toronto Symphony's string section often sounded like it was playing in another room.
With the renovation of the hall, the addition of much Canadian maple made a world of difference to the sound of the strings, and Music Director Peter Oundjian, himself a violinist, has done much to improve the string sound as well. So, in a way, I feel as if I heard the symphony for the first time tonight. The person who really heard it for the first time, my sister Barbara, testified to the communicative power and emotional reach of Mahler in her comments after the concert ended.
The conductor for this performance was the Toronto Symphony's Conductor Laureate, Sir Andrew Davis. Well I remember his early performances of Mahler when he was the TSO`s young Music Director in the 1970s and 1980s, and his understanding of the composer has grown notably since then. Good thing, because the Ninth is in many ways the most subtle and challenging work of the Mahler canon.
That`s a word not many people associate with Mahler, but this performance definitely realized much of the subtlety of the score. Davis got exactly the pianississimo tone needed in the numerous passages where the ensemble dwindles down to just one or two solo instruments, with the rest of the orchestra raptly awaiting the moment to respond. In each of these moments, you could feel the audience stillness as well, a most essential part of a good performance of such quiet music. The long slow adagissimo close of the final movement was both breathtaking and heartaching, a magical suspension of time.
The long opening movement has many stops, starts, and gear shifts and Davis managed all these changes with aplomb. There are several climaxes, each one followed by one of those chamber-ensemble moments which (in context) evoke an auditory equivalent of the echoing vaults of eternity. The crisis point of the movement leads to a catastrophic collapse into the opening phrases, now blasted out fortissimo. Sadly, the quiet passage following this climactic collapse was played a little too matter-of-factly and not quietly enough, losing that spacious echo effect which is ideally wanted. The quiet ending, though, was perfection -- the final plucked note from the violins perfectly placed and just loud enough to register.
The ländler second movement had just the right rustic swing to it, an essential quality whenever Mahler goes to this Austrian folk dance (in slowish triple time). The contrasting centre section speeds up into a kind of nightmarish waltz which then takes on the character of a triple-time march, before disintegrating into a return of the opening ländler. Throughout this movement, the shrilling woodwinds were a delight -- blaring without straining, and screaming without rasping.
The third movement, the Rondo-Burleske, has to be at just-the-right speed. Too slow and it becomes slack. Too fast and it becomes overly frantic, especially in the accelerations of the closing pages. Davis picked a nearly ideal speed, and with crisp playing from all concerned this savagely brilliant showpiece practically shot off the stage. This seemed likely to actually happen in the high-octane coda where the ominous descending arpeggios registered perfectly, and the final phrase rocketed into the echoing air of the hall.
I was struck tonight, more than ever before, by the family resemblance between the long slow finale and the adagio movement of Bruckner`s Ninth Symphony. The two pieces aren't exactly brothers, but perhaps second cousins -- both breathing a rarefied air that is not quite of this world any longer. Both begin with a leap upward for the violins, who then work through a long singing melody. Mahler's special genius here is that, for the first ten minutes or so, he has the violins and violas singing their song entirely on their lower strings, which have a much more grounded, earthy tone than the high E string where most violin acrobatics take place in other works. The resemblance with the Bruckner draws closer in the slow sustained endings of the two movements, although Mahler certainly went much farther than Bruckner ever dreamed of going. The final coda illustrates this concept perfectly: a passage taking several minutes to play, for strings alone, and with note succeeding note with measured deliberation.
Nothing testified to the success of this performance better than the long silence succeeding the end of the Rondo-Burleske -- an orchestral showpiece that practically cries out for cheers and applause. That is, until the even longer silence the audience held after the final notes of the whole symphony, a silence that continued for some seconds after Davis had lowered his hands. Of course the ovation that then erupted was loud and sustained, but the mere fact that nobody wanted to be the one to break the spell and start the applause says more than any words of mine about what a truly great performance this was.
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