Marin Alsop Takes the BSO for a Spin
Marin Alsop had only to walk onto the stage of Meyerhoff Symphony Hall Friday night to receive a standing ovation. Rare have been the evenings with that hall so full for a concert by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in recent years. One can only hope that the honeymoon will be long-lasting for Alsop and Charm City. That this renewal was consecrated over a program of John Adams and Mahler is all the more remarkable. The future looks bright for all who want to hear more contemporary music from the area's major ensembles.
Fearful Symmetries provides a good workout for an ensemble, requiring a different sort of sustained virtuosity. Composer John Adams has described the work as fitting into a genre he calls "traveling music," in that its pulsating rhythms and harmonies arranged in symmetrical patterns evoke a voyage through an urban landscape. Many of the sounds seem intended to remind the listener of trains: the rattle of the tracks and chug of wheels, the wail of sirens and clanging of crossing bells.
In Friday night's performance, the BSO performed with a good sense of shape, guided well by Alsop in color and scope. The only lack was in the ensemble unity, which just never quite gelled, and Alsop's three or four gestures to various corners of the orchestra — two fingers stabbed at her eyes — indicated that all parties were not on the same page. The brass section occasionally seemed to be pushing the edge of Alsop's beat, while the most off-kilter pacing came from the synthesizers, placed far away and at the side. If Alsop could forego some of her dancing, crouching act on the podium, her beat might be clearer. Even with minor imperfections, this piece can provide, when you listen with your eyes closed, some beautiful expansive American landscape imagery. With regular workouts like this, the BSO is hopefully headed toward a honed, specialist sensitivity to contemporary music.
Photo of Marin Alsop on her Vespa by Paul Schraub
Gustav Mahler composed his fifth symphony shortly after he suffered a near-fatal intestinal hemorrhage in 1901. It opens with a striking funeral march, and the movement of the work seems to be from that introduction to the impending sense of death Mahler experienced toward a fiery reassertion of life. Its many technical demands and rousing bombast have made it a favorite, recorded an alarming number of times, and the signature work in many ways of great conductors like Georg Solti and Leonard Bernstein.
Does Marin Alsop's Mahler reach the heights of this very competitive field? Not yet. Her Mahler 5 added up to about 70 minutes of music, which was not expansive. The funeral march was steady, if reserved, with pronounced rubato on the openings of phrases. The fast sections were generally frenetic, even manic, and Alsop tended to blast by significant moments like the sparkling ending of the second movement, where there was little sense of wonder or transcendence. The scherzo had a driven, disjointed feel, contrasting beautifully with the gentler trios. There was plenty of excitement and strong, confident playing. Even after strenuous moments in the Adams, the brass had apocalyptic strength up to the astounding final measures of the fifth symphony, with very good performances from the principal trumpet and trombone, as well as a generally fine solo horn in the miniature horn concerto of the third movement.
The fourth movement, a gorgeous and enigmatic Adagietto, is the most famous part of the fifth symphony, not least because it was used as the soundtrack for the death of Aschenbach in Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice. The piece is connected thematically with Mahler's own song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, and that song's text is about being lost from the world. According to another source, the Adagietto may instead be a sort of love song to Mahler's young wife, Alma. Whatever it means, it can make or break a performance of the fifth symphony, and this Adagietto was a disappointment. Alsop never seemed to settle into a comfortable reading and never brought the orchestra down to a true pianissimo. While the experience of Mahler 5 live is almost always rewarding, this performance had excitement and strength but was not Mahler to remember.
John Adams will conduct the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra next week (October 4 to 6) in two of his own works and Beethoven's 7th symphony. The next local performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 will be by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, brought to the Kennedy Center by Washington Performing Arts Society (February 3, 2008). Now that will likely be Mahler to remember.