Friday 12 June 2015

Death and Resurrection

Amazing how much times have changed in the five decades since I first made the acquaintance of the work featured in this week's Toronto Symphony concerts.


In the mid-1960s, the number of commercial recordings of Mahler's Symphony # 2 could be counted on the fingers of one hand.  The Toronto Symphony Orchestra had not even performed the work yet.  In fact, as far as I could discover, the only performance to have taken place in Toronto by that date had been given by an orchestra and choir assembled for that purpose by conductor Dr. Heinz Unger.


Fast forward to today.  By now the Toronto Symphony has performed this monumental work so often that it almost ranks for frequency alongside Beethoven's Ninth.  Recordings proliferate with such rapidity that it seems scarcely a month goes by without a new release.  A number of conductors have now recorded the work more than once.  Leonard Bernstein, one of the earliest and most passionate American advocates for Mahler, actually managed to lay down three separate recordings, two of them taken in live performances. 


And the title, Resurrection Symphony, is as well known and automatic a label for this work as Choral Symphony is for the Beethoven.


Numerous commentators have tried to explain and justify why interest in Mahler suddenly began booming among musicians and audiences alike in the 1960s (and has not yet abated).  I have no intention of wading into that ongoing discussion.  I simply treasure the opportunity to hear this musical magnificence again in live performance.


For any lover of the Resurrection Symphony, attending a concert performance is essential.  No matter how fine recording technology becomes, not the most sophisticated home sound system can reproduce the actual physical impact of the music heard live.  The moments in the symphony that prove this point are too numerous to mention in anything less than a full-length analysis, so I'm just going to let the statement stand.


Unlike Mahler's preceding First Symphony, this one has no introduction.  It plunges abruptly into the midst of its dramatic course with a vehement opening statement for cellos and basses, laden with terror, that goes rumbling on throughout much of the lengthy first movement.  It's essential for the conductor and orchestra to get the shape of this long, winding theme right because so much of the movement's structural coherence depends on doing so.  The key hairpin sforzandi were perfectly placed, and the shape of that long rolling theme was exactly outlined, setting the stage for all the drama to come. 


The first movement takes the form of a long funeral march, but does have interruptions to the flow as the tempo speeds up in some passages and slows in others.  All these gear changes were handled very smoothly indeed.  If some of the accelerando passages were arguably a little on the fast side, no great harm was done as the overall shape of the movement was not lost.  The final coda, which has been aptly described as a descent into a burial vault, moved with just that kind of deliberation and unwavering slow tread.  Very gripping.


The first time I heard the symphony live, in about 1973 or 1974, an intermission was taken at this point.  Mahler in the score did ask for a pause of "at least five minutes".  This is more usually taken by giving the orchestra a short break to re-tune at this point, and also to have the vocal soloists enter here, as was done in this performance.


With the second movement, the real quality of Oundjian's interpretation began to shine through in earnest.  It's easy to play this symphony loudly.  Far harder is to tune down the sound of the huge Mahlerian orchestra to genuinely quiet tones, even to the musical equivalent of a whisper.  At various key passages from here to the end of the work, that is exactly what Maestro Oundjian and the orchestra truly accomplished.  I admit my memory may be at fault, but I can't recall any earlier Toronto performance in which the sound was slimmed down quite like this.


With that intensely quiet playing comes a real sharpening of concentration by the audience, and the feeling which simply cannot be reproduced in any recorded playback of two thousand people listening with absolutely rapt attention, holding their breath for fear of breaking the spell cast by the players and (later) the singers.  I know this sounds melodramatic, but I can only assure you that the silence was unbroken by any coughing or shuffling of feet.  This quiet intensity becomes absolutely critical in the numerous silent pauses during the long, turbulent finale.


The third movement scherzo continued from the second movement the relaxed, flowing style of the Austrian landler, but added to it was the necessary quotient of sardonic, ironic tone which infuses this movement and fills it with disquiet.  Here is the place where the woodwinds really get highlighted, with their brilliant, brittle lines skirling wildly above the flowing string parts.  The shrillness of those wind lines was as authentic a Mahler sound as one could wish.  Sadly, Oundjian's acceleration to the climax was miscalculated and the orchestra came apart for a moment or two.


Mezzo-soprano Susan Platts is a noted Mahler specialist, and her first entry in the fourth movement song, Urlicht ("Primal Light"), showed exactly why.  Her unaccompanied voice emerged out of the silence at the end of the third movement with exactly the right magical effect, lifting the key half a tone from the C minor of the scherzo to the D flat opening of the song.  Throughout this four-minute miniature tone poem, her sustained tone and sensitive interpretation of the text were exemplary.


Immediately Oundjian launched the orchestra into the long, dramatic finale.  The very opening crash very nearly lifted the roof off the hall but more gripping still were the succeeding quieter passages for the offstage brasses.  Throughout this long, panoramic depiction of the last day of the world, the echoing silences between the louder parts created again that gripping sense of communal participation which enfolds audience and performers in a heightened state of mutual awareness. 


The earthquake which rips open the graves was truly immense and terrible, and (unusually) Oundjian held himself to very nearly the same slow speed for the second eruption (most conductors whip through the repeat as fast as they can).  The march of the dead streaming to judgement roared along with immense, unstoppable energy, the Dies irae plainchant blazing above all the rest.


If there was a moment of disappointment here, it came in the flute solo which contrasts with the final offstage brass fanfares as the last sound from the disappearing earth.  It just came across a little too robustly; I have certainly heard it played with a more tentative, uncertain air, and more quietly too.


From the moment of the choir's first murmured entry, the performance predictably took wings and soared aloft.  If it doesn't, the performers must be incompetent.  But the singers of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir certainly know how to fine down their tone to the very edge of inaudible for the first notes, and what is more to the point, have no trouble getting back to the same dynamic level for the entry of the second verse.  This can't by any means be said of many of the choirs who have recorded the work!  Soprano Erin Wall has a very large, dramatic voice, and I was a little concerned ahead of time, but needlessly.  Her opening notes emerged so gently from the mass of choral sound that I couldn't pinpoint the moment when I first became aware that she was singing.  It was a masterly execution of a difficult effect.


The remainder of the vocal/choral finale was all very well done, and the resplendent conclusion with extra brasses and organ joining in thrilled the audience, as it should and must.  But in retrospect, what I will remember about this concert more than anything is the incredible quietness, the breathtaking hush, the intense absorption of the audience in the symphony's less rhetorical moments.  I think that Mahler, who said that a symphony should encompass the entire world, would have been very pleased by that aspect of this performance.

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