The sheer numbers were impressive. It’s not often you get to
see the Gaillard stage filled edge to edge and feel the wide-open hall vibrate
with such a big sound.
Leave it to Gustav Mahler to write a symphony that requires two sets of timpani, two
harps, four trombones, eight trumpets, nine
horns, robust winds and percussion and nearly 50 strings. Oh, and did I mention
the organ? The off-stage brass? The two solo singers? The huge chorus?
The occasion was Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor, the
“Resurrection,” featuring a confident Daniel Hege on the podium, soprano Jill
Terhaar Lewis, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Luiken, the CSO Chorus and the College of
Charleston Concert Choir prepared by Rob Taylor. It was courageous (both
musically and logistically) of the recently resurrected Charleston Symphony,
with its core of 24, to tackle this monster, and I confess I was a little
worried that a freshly assembled ensemble consisting of many musicians who
don’t play together consistently would fail to make the music gel and pack
Mahler’s requisite emotional punch.
Well, the team pulled it off.
Mahler’s 10 symphonies are big, complex expressions of
innocence and experience, alternating between childlike folk tunes expressing
happy nostalgia and profound laments informed by the heart-rending angst of a
composer torn between identities.
Mahler, born a Jew, converted to Catholicism, though had to
contend with explicit anti-Semitism. He married the beautiful young socialite
Alma Schindler who would bear him two daughters, one of whom, Maria, would die
young of scarlet fever. But Alma was not the stay-at-home type, and she began
an affair with the architect Walter Gropius.
Having gained a great reputation as a conductor of opera and
symphonic music, Mahler would struggle to find time to compose. He loved the
voice but never wrote an opera himself, preferring to meld voices — solo and
chorus — into the textures of his enormous concert works.
What’s more, his music, informed both by the Germanic
tradition and by Eastern Europe’s folk tradition, was the last to fully embrace
the post-Romantic style. He was a man on the cusp of the era of modern music
who nevertheless could not resist looking over his shoulder at a dying
tradition.
Saturday’s concert began with an allegro
maestoso featuring lots of give and take between strings and
brass, with the winds and percussion adding their critical textures. It felt a
little like the musicians were being reacquainted with one another after
rehearsals. They were perhaps too worried about playing the notes on the page
and keeping things together (which they did rather well) to permit themselves
to delve into the contradictory significance of the music.
But then they let go. The andante,
which had a chamber music feel, was a charmer, full of pluck (literally) and
grace. Hege set down the baton and conducted with his bare hands, which lent a
welcomed immediacy to the proceedings.
The third movement, “In quietly flowing motion,” was an
evocative, sometimes tempestuous ride featuring Mahler’s typical mood swings,
lilting melodies and bold bursts of brass.
Luiken sang her Urlicht
(“Primal Light”) gorgeously, those Romantic lines soaring to the heavens. And
the finale, a scherzo of the apocalyptic
kind, showed off the chorus and soloists to beautiful effect. An admirable
finesse and glow dominated, along with pain and longing, culminating in bursts
of blissful exuberance.
Lewis lent gravitas to the large vocal sections with chorus,
her lyrical voice emerging from the textures effortlessly.
The choristers waited patiently for the fifth movement to
sing, then began with a shimmering “aufersteh’n,” “rise again!” It grew
from there. “You were not born for nothing!” … “In love’s fierce striving I
shall soar upwards.” … “That for which you suffered, to God will it lead you!”
Mahler suffered. He suffered from the loss of a child and
the abandonment of a wife. He suffered from insult and betrayal. He also
succeeded, becoming one of the most respected conductors of his time.
The music he managed to write — mostly symphonies and songs — is
imbued with all the angst and disappointment, love and longing, he could
muster.
It is music from an era when the heart seemed always ready
to burst, when a new world order loomed in the near distance and when a
European composer often had something big and important to say.
The Charleston Symphony on Saturday made its statement,
conveying Mahler’s whimsy and sorrow with a command unusual for a regional
orchestra.
Leaving the Gaillard after that splendid concert, as the
drizzle began to coat the ground, one felt — dare I say it? — reborn.
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