SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mahler, Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection) : National Symphony Orchestra, Master Chorale of Washington / Iván Fischer (conductor) Juliane Banse (soprano)Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington DC  4.4 2008 (RRR)


If you arrived at the Kennedy Center for Thursday evening’s performance of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony expecting a sonic spectacle or an orchestral wallow, you were in the wrong place. That is not what the National Symphony Orchestra and the Master Chorale of Washington, with soloists, under conductor Iván Fischer delivered. It was, rather, the Resurrection without the Apocalypse. I cannot imagine a performance further removed from Leonard Bernstein’s high-wire neurotic portrayals of Mahler than this one. I admit that this was my first exposure to Fischer’s conducting. A friend who had listened to, and liked, Fischer’s recent recording of the Second  used the term “understatement” to describe his approach. Yes, that is it. If you came for the thrills, you could have found the first four movements a bit enervating – until Fischer pulled out all the stops at the finale.

If you are open to his approach however, there were many rewards. It was evident from the beginning of the first movement that Fischer was not attuned to the hyper-dramatic, but was aiming at refinement of expression, transparency and inner balance. Nothing was stretched; nothing was pulled. By keeping things in their right relationship to each other, Fischer did not have to exaggerate. There was nothing wild or willful. Fischer trusted the music.

With the NSO, he achieved an orchestral pianissimo resembling vapor rising from the ground that touched the listener like mist:  it was breathtaking in its delicacy and I have never heard finer from the NSO. If Mahler had had a pin drop as part of his orchestration, you could have heard it in this performance. The visual spectacle of the huge orchestral and choral forces on stage belied the sonorities that reached me in row EE. This was more like listening to an extraordinarily fine chamber orchestra.

However, beauty can have a price – in a sense of lessened drama from a lack of underlying tension that threatens to burst forth at any moment (Bernstein’s trademark). The first movement seemed more of a pastoral excursion than a Totenfeier, or funeral rite. Things seemed more magical than terrifying. Here was an interpretation that made Mahler’s request for a 5-minute pause before the start of the Andante movement, with its charming minuet, seem unnecessary. It did not seem that death was so bad to begin with and in this interpretation, the transition was not, as Mahler feared, at all jarring.

One may consider this an interpretive mistake, but Fischer held to it consistently and consequently revealed much about the inner workings of the music and many often overlooked beauties. Mahler said that a symphony contains a whole world, and Ivan Fischer certainly brought one forth in this work. For the most part, he showed it to us from the outside, so we  might better observe its finely jeweled movements. The level of emotional involvement matched with this perspective, until a change occurred in the later part of the last movement.

With the entry of the chorus, I felt myself for the first time inside the music which was another masterpiece of pianissimo. How many times have I ever heard something of such hushed beauty? It was worth the entire evening. The Master Chorale was magnificent and then, with the radiant entry of soprano Juliane Banse, the tears began to well. From there on, I was pretty much lost in the spiritual moment that Mahler intended to express in this work – so much so that I turned to my son when it was over and asked, “Do you think that is what it will be like?”

If it is, I will remember that the NSO and Fischer brought me there first.

Robert R. Reilly

Among many other things, Robert R. Reilly is the music critic for CRISIS Magazine at InsideCatholic.com.

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