More Mahler at Strathmore
This week, I cannot complain about not hearing enough Mahler. After hearing the multiphonic performance of Mahler's eighth symphony, the Symphony of a Thousand, with the National Symphony Orchestra, I was at Strathmore on Saturday night to hear the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra take on Mahler's second symphony, the Resurrection. This was the last program under Yuri Temirkanov, the departing artistic director of the BSO, who will be succeeded this fall by Marin Alsop, the first woman to lead a major American orchestra. Temirkanov began his tenure in Baltimore with a performance of the Resurrection symphony and obviously cares deeply for this extraordinary piece of music. Hopes were high for a fiery performance to exceed the NSO eighth. Alas, it was not quite to be.
Premiered in 1894, the second is a transcendent work like the eighth, but more introspective, more personal. Many of its most stunning moments, like the first entrance of the chorus in the fifth movement ("Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n"), are pianissimo, almost too hushed to be heard. To be sure, it has its theatrics, too, with offstage brass like the eighth, but only two vocal soloists rather than eight. There were some moving moments in this performance, where the blare of brass and the bellow of chorus made my spine tingle, but it often felt staged, insincere, contrived. The chorus remained seated for that dramatic first entrance, which made it a bit of a surprise, and then, as if in response to their own words ("Rise again, yes, rise again you will"), they slowly rose one by one to begin the next section of music. That unnecessary bit of drama aside, their singing — they were comprised of members of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, the former Baltimore Symphony Chorus, and the Morgan State University Choir — was fine enough.
The same cannot be said of the vocal soloists. Mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby sang the fourth movement, a version of Mahler's own song Urlicht, from the front of the stage, where the exceedingly low range of the part was mostly covered by the orchestra. Things only got worse in the last movement, when she and soprano Janice Chandler-Etemé sang from the top of the choral tier. This arrangement did not work well for the soloists with the NSO either, and it only served to underscore the unsatisfying nature of the soloists' performance. Now it's true that this was the third of four performances of the Mahler second, which may have resulted in some of the tired sound.
The orchestra sounded great for the most part, in spite of the challenge of numerous beeps and other audience sounds. In the middle of an 80-minute work with no intermission, people inevitably got up to go to the bathroom. At one point just before all the fireworks in the fifth movement, Temirkanov himself looked up to see an elderly couple leaving the hall. In the fast first movement, Temirkanov held back the strings to reveal the wind solos and harp part, in the funeral service of the symphony, the death of Mahler's unknown hero. The tempo of the second movement did not really set in at first, causing the conductor to glare at some of the players. This charming memory of the hero's life was a buoyant Ländler, full of emotion, with an excellent pizzicato section, turning the strings of the whole orchestra into a balalaika band. The scherzo also was on the rapid side, with thrilling swells of crescendi. The crowd's ovation was generous, the result of an appreciation of Mahler's incredible achievement, even if this particular performance was not all it could have been.