MTT conducts Mahler's Resurrection Symphony

What a shame that this week’s National Symphony Orchestra offering will only be presented once more! The orchestra used to do all its subscription programs three times, but that has faltered in recent years. Given Thursday night’s full and enthusiastic house, the NSO is failing to capitalize on a hit.  

One reason, though, may have been that guest conductor Michael Tilson Thomas has been battling serious health issues and was possibly leery of leading Mahler’s monumental “Resurrection” Symphony three times. Not that there was anything in the performance that betrayed fatigue; though younger and healthier conductors have performed seated on a stool, Tilson Thomas stood throughout the hour-and-a-half-long work (including the long pause the composer asked for after the opening movement) and led the proceedings with efficient but sharply-characterized conducting throughout.

Mahler’s Second Symphony (the “Resurrection”), premiered in 1895, is perhaps his most popular and oft-performed work along with the Fifth. The composer worried about the perception of a “servile imitation of Beethoven” in his similar use of a chorus -- sitting for over an hour, only getting to sing after the finale is well under way. But the text (from the poet Friedrich Klopstock with interpolations by Mahler himself) is about weightier matters than simply “brotherhood” – the composer wants to assure us that the agonies of life and death aren’t for naught, but that “you will rise again, my dust . . . . to bloom again you were sown.”  Along with some of the most stirring music to come from his pen.  

Though it must be said, the massive finale has some odd compositional choices.  Unlike the first three movements, it’s driven by a scenario rather than musical forces.  There are unforgettable moments, like the soft brass chorale in the key of the previous Urlicht movement.  But the finale lurches to a full stop several times, the old Dies Irae chant lurks under one of the main themes, and there are extended, somewhat portentous episodes with off-stage instruments (signifying, one assumes, the end of natural life and the signaling of celestial forces).  Most puzzling is Mahler’s decision to have the closing pages for orchestra alone; shouldn’t the choir, that gave us the good news, be joining in instead of just sitting there listening? 

Back to the performance itself, it was a fine outing by all.  These are likely Tilson Thomas’s last performances in D.C., and the NSO played with unusual dedication and fervor. The occasion aside, Mahler’s music energizes and inspires orchestral musicians like no one else’s, and everyone brought their A game. With the contrabasses over on the left, behind the cellos, the symphony’s crucial bass lines growled with startling clarity and power (particularly throughout the opening movement). Tilson Thomas has recorded the entire Mahler cycle with his San Francisco Symphony, and his deep familiarity with the music led to a comfortable rather than driven interpretation. He didn’t try to make any special points, seeking rather to let the music unfold in its own way.  

Not saying everything was fully satisfying. I didn’t understand the need for all the (unmarked) tempo changes in the scherzo, and the Andante moderato’s gentle folk dance lacked lilt (each beat sounding pretty much the same). The brass (particularly the horns) often buried the strings, and there were pitch problems in the finale between the on- and off-stage instruments.  

But overall, the performance was of very high standard. Alice Coote, employed her lovely mezzo in Urlicht -- the short setting of a old German folk poem that serves as a bridge to the finale – with great skill, and soprano Jacquelyn Stucker’s floating up out of the first choir entrance was a magical moment. The brief passage where the two soloists sing together was a highlight, the voices producing an especially lovely blend. The Choral Arts Society (prepared by Scott Tucker) sang with firm pitch and a wide dynamic range; but as always, the masks wreak havoc on diction.  

Everyone fervently hopes that Tilson Thomas, one of America’s finest conductors, will beat his health challenges and continue to make music for a long time. But if this turns out to be his valediction here, it was a triumph. He was clearly moved by the fervor of the extended ovation.