SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mahler,  Das Lied von der Erde:  Thomas Hampson, baritone; Stuart Skelton, tenor; San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 29.9.2007 (HS)

 

As Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony complete their live recordings of Mahler's symphonies and major orchestral works, their comfort level with the music and sure-handed sense of confidence has become palpable. Not that the earliest efforts came up short in any way. They are among the must-have recordings. But now, having recorded all the numbered symphonies and the other orchestral song cycles, they come to Das Lied von der Erde playing with breathtaking attachment to the music.

 

The microphones hung above the stage this week as baritone Thomas Hampson and tenor Stuart Skelton joined the orchestra for four performances of Mahler's six-part song cycle, his ninth symphony in all but name. By some accounts, the opening night suffered some glitches in performance, and Hampson's singing was said to be mannered. That, unfortunately, will be the one broadcast in syndication. But by the fourth performances, heard Saturday evening, that all seemed to have been ironed out. The CD will come from the best performances, finished with extra cleanup sessions in the same hall.

 

Saturday the sound of the orchestra emerged as lustrous, the transitions from Mahler's serious side to his sardonic interpolations came off seamlessly, and the rhythmic niceties fit like spandex. There was nothing mannered about Hampson's singing, either. Suffering some ill effects of a cold (in introductory remarks, Tilson Thomas said he anticipated some "blues-like" sounds), Hampson's singing actually was pure and focused, diction clear, dynamics beautifully tuned.

 

The weak link, in some ways, was Skelton. Recently a member of the San Francisco Opera's Adler Fellows program for young artists, his lyric tenor was clearly overmatched by the dynamics of Mahler's boisterous opening song, and Tilson Thomas wasn't about to scale back the orchestra and lose a whit of their brilliance. Presumably, the engineers can goose up the tenor's part in editing, but in the hall whole phrases got drowned out.

 

Skelton displayed a clear, pure-sounding top, and Mahler places a lot of the tenor's music up there. But it's not a piercing sound, and that's what's needed in this song. Skelton was much better in the gentler third song, "Von der Jugend," where the sweetness of his sound and the unaffected clarity of his singing stood in better stead. His final effort, in the fifth song, "Der Trunkene im Frühling," had the right sway to it but again, seemed a bit shy of the orchestra's balance.

 

No problems of that sort with Hampson, who crowned the work with absolutely stunning singing in the spacious finale, "Der Abschied." The ecstasy of some of the phrases in the first part of the song, playing against other phrases of tear-producing delicacy, was utterly mesmerizing. In the finale stanza, the resignation mixed with almost joyful acceptance of death brought lumps to this listener's throat even before the final "ewig... ewig..."

 

Earlier, in "Der Einsame im Herbst," the second song in the cycle, Hampson gave us a clear picture of the lonely man of the title with its simplicity and reticence. And "Von der Schönheit," the fourth song, started simply and became thrilling in the pages about the boys on their horses. In the final stanza, about "loveliest of maidens," Hampson shifted into a gorgeous pianissimo, sometimes resorting to falsetto but always with beauty of tone.

 

The orchestra, which took Mahler's Seventh on tour with them to Europe earlier this month (to generally rave reviews), played with a swagger that was justified at every turn. Every phrase had its own sense, and seemed to emerge organically from something that preceded it. The woodwinds were especially beguiling, in ensemble, in pairs and in solos such as the extended oboe work of principal oboist William Bennett.

 

To open the concert, Tilson Thomas brought a remarkable level of buoyancy to a richly textured and surprisingly weighty performance of Mozart's Symphony No. 34. But the focus clearly was on Mahler, and it paid the highest of dividends.

 

Harvey Steiman