Noseda, NSO resplendent in Mahler's 5th

An NSO/Noseda Mahler cycle, please?

These are heady times for the National Symphony Orchestra. Now with its best music director since Antal Dorati in the 1970’s, the orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda is playing with sharp discipline and renewed pride. There was a high-profile appearance at Lincoln Center last fall, their first CD release with Noseda just came out, and the NSO will tour Japan next month. The hall was full last night for what is surely a season highlight: no soloists, just two symphonic totems showcasing the ensemble and its taut, driven leader. 

Any orchestra musician will tell you that the two most challenging (and rewarding) composers in the repertoire are Strauss and Mahler. Both were full-time conductors who crafted scores of dazzling complexity, knew the instruments down to the most minute detail, and pushed each one’s technique to the limit (though not beyond, as so many later 20th-century composers tried to do, creating gelatinous mush). Excerpts by these two names figure prominently on every audition list for every instrument, and thus it is that when an orchestra takes on a Mahler symphony, you are hearing everyone playing for personal pride on top of anything else.

The NSO doesn’t do a lot of Mahler, so interest was high for the mighty Symphony No. 5 this week (they’ll do it on the Japan tour as well). The orchestra rose to the occasion, with everyone locked in and prepared, even including some older members who’ve not always pulled their weight at other times. Noseda wielded everything together, putting out as much energy as the hardest-working musician, and the performance had dazzling unanimity.  

Mahler’s scores contain a numbing amount of performance instructions, and each part is notated in microscopic detail (he revised and tinkered with all his scores throughout his life).  There is so much there, and so much behind the notes, that every interpreter has to pick and choose. Each bar can sound different under a different baton. As an artist, Noseda favors momentum and intensity over contemplation and individual expression. He was particularly effective in the Scherzo (the longest movement in the piece), a miniature symphony in its own right. The kaleidoscopic moods of country dancing, terror, gemütlichkeit, elegant waltzing, horn calls across mountains and valleys, and approaching menace were knitted together in a convincing whole.  

The famous Adagietto did not lose any of its yearning loveliness by the more flowing tempo than one usually hears, and the material then made more sense when it came back in the Allegro finale. But when Noseda had the violins whisper the opening theme still more softly in the final section (not indicated in the score), it was a moment of transcendence.  

Noseda trusted the NSO trumpeter to play the famous opening un-conducted (a rare thing).  It was glorious in sound, but the rhythm was somewhat slack, the 16th-notes coming a bit early. And this carried over into the gently singing march in the strings, where the trochaic rhythms could have had more snap. What I missed the most in the performance were Mahler’s carefully-notated glissandos (mostly in the strings, but in other instruments as well); they were there, but not nearly voluptuous enough, almost slighted.                

Again, no performance can capture everything, so everyone who knows this music carries a slightly different “soundprint” in their head. But comparing this rendition to those of iconic Mahler collaborations of the past – Bernstein/Vienna, Haitink/Concertgebouw, and Solti/Chicago, – is not necessarily to the NSO’s detriment. There was precision, virtuosity, and polish to everything, and the crowd’s heartfelt cheering at the conclusion was well-deserved.  I hope Noseda begins planning a Mahler cycle soon.     

The Schubert “Unfinished” Symphony which opened the concert was nicely-done, though it likely got short shrift in rehearsal time; one often saw Noseda giving indications (swells in dynamics) that were not matched in sound. But it was the perfect curtain-raiser, as Schubert was sort of a proto-Mahler, with glowering darkness around every sunny corner.    

The concert repeats tonight and Saturday at 8:00.  Saturday’s performance, for those who can’t get there, will also be live-streamed.