Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the Philadelphia Orchestra in this exciting performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony, the work that epitomizes the composer’s music perhaps more than any other. He brought out in distinctive fashion the work’s varied genres, rhythms, tempos, and colors, while showing off the brilliance of the orchestra’s musicians.
Although the published score of the Third makes no reference to a programmatic structure, the composer’s autograph score clearly reflects his concept of a tiered cosmological structure of creation. Part I is a lengthy opening movement headed “Pan Awakes: Summer marches in”, and Part II is comprised of five movements given titles reflecting successive evolutionary stages of creation, ascending from plants to animals, to mankind, to angels, and finally to the love of God. Only in the sung texts in the fourth and fifth movements, however, is there any explicit connection to this underlying scheme.
A majestic octet of horns playing in unison launched the monumental opening movement, with deep rumblings from the bass drum creating a mysteriously dramatic aura. Nézet-Séguin contrasted the different rhythms of funeral and military marches, giving each its appropriate character, and maintained precise control of the movement’s widely varying rhythms, tempos, and dynamics as the music ranged from joyful to tragic. The massive buildup of the march depicting summer marching in was particularly effective, with string tremolos overwhelmingly potent. The highlight here was the magnificent playing of principal trombone Nitzan Haroz of what is the most prominent showpiece for that instrument in the classical orchestral repertory. At the end of the movement, Nézet-Séguin stepped off the podium, gesturing to the audience to remain silent, and observed a long pause.
The lyrical second movement, depicting ‘what the flowers in the meadow tell me’, was played with appropriately rustic charm rather than as the formal, courtly dance that its marking of Tempo di Menuetto might suggest. The two faster-paced Trios that interrupt this country dance music effectively varied the mood: the first quite cheerful and the second darker in feeling. The woodwinds, especially Jeffrey Khaner’s flute and Phillipe Tondre’s oboe, stood out in this movement, as well as in the depictions of birdcalls in the succeeding one, ‘what the animals in the forest tell me’. But the high points of the latter movement were the soaring solos, performed offstage on the posthorn by principal trumpeter Esteban Batallán that were interspersed between recurring quotations from Mahler’s own Des Knaben Wunderhorn setting of ‘Ablösung im Sommer’. Equally gorgeous were passages in which Batallán’s posthorn was joined by a pair of French horns from within the orchestra.
After taking another break, Nézet-Séguin stepped back onto the podium for the final three movements, which were played without further pause, but with each having its own distinct character. In the fourth movement, ‘what humanity tells me’, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, stationed in front of the harps, gave a luminous rendition of ‘O Mensch! Gib Acht!’ (Oh Man! Take Heed!), ‘Zarathustra’s Midnight Song’ from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra. DiDonato’s beautiful voice, clear and distinct in tone and diction, easily penetrated the accompanying orchestral sound. Although the eleven lines of her text represent interpolations between the twelve strokes of midnight, her white dress and brilliant spotlighting were more suggestive of radiant sunlight.
The solemn midnight mood was suddenly left behind as the fifth movement, ‘what the angels tell me’, began with the joyous ringing of bells, mimicked by the “Bimm bamm” intonations of the childrens’ choirs, as the chorus of women sang another Wunderhorn poem, ‘Es sungen drei Engel’ (Three Angels Were Singing). In response to DiDonato’s penitential entreaties, the women commanded that she does not weep but rather pray, as the children sang promises of the heavenly joy that will come to those who love God. The Philadelphia Boys’ and Girls’ Choirs and the women of the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir excellently brought out the joyous character of the song.
The final movement, ‘what love tells me’, the first of Mahler’s great adagios, showed off at the outset the glorious Philadelphia strings, the violas and cellos lush and resonant, the violins soaring above with lyrical melodic lines, and outstanding solos performed by concertmaster David Kim. The entire orchestra played superbly here. Among many excellent offerings from the woodwinds, Khaner’s flute and Tondre’s oboe again stood out, and the brass were terrific as they took on a heightened role toward the work’s conclusion, presaged by the horns reprising the theme with which they began the symphony some one-hundred minutes before. A glowing coda dominated by the staccato beats of two timpanis finally gave way to an uplifting final chord.
The post The Philadelphia Orchestra/Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall – Mahler’s Third Symphony with Joyce DiDonato appeared first on The Classical Source.
