SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mahler: Symphony no. 4 in G Major

The first half of this concert was devoted to the Mendelssohn Concerto, in which the solo violinist Viviane Hagner was making her Chicago debut . While some members of the press called attention to issues of intonation and balance in her Thursday performance, most of those problems seemed resolved on Saturday evening. Hagner has an appealing tone, which seems well suited to the familiar Concerto by Mendelssohn. After the opening gesture though, it was sometimes difficult to hear her within the tutti sections. The first movement’s cadenza was an opportunity to appreciate Hagner’s technical facility, with clearly played double stops and nicely articulated runs. In the second movement the balance was better, but Markus Stenz’s broad gestures drewan overly full sound from the Orchestra, which did not always fit the character of this piece. The final movement opened with a somewhat slow approach to the Allegretto non troppo, and this served as contrast to the Allegro molto vivace which followed. The pace of the latter section was sufficiently fast to allow Ms Hagner’s nicely virtuosic playing to emerge nicely.

After the intermission, the evening concluded with Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, a work which has been part of the CSO’s repertoire since 1916 when the work was performed under the direction of Frederick Stock. Most recently the CSO included this Symphony in its 2005-6 season, when David Zinman conducted it with Isabel Bayrakdaria as the soprano soloist. For this concert, Stenz offered an individualised interpretation of this familiar work. The first movement opened with the introductory Schellenkappe taken at an unusually slow tempo, followed by the first three notes of the main theme played with a deal of rubato. From that point onwards, the tempo was more conventional, and Stenz’s continuing broadness of gesture sometimes resulted in particularly sudden changes in volume, which were at times jarring While he brought out all of the individual thematic lines well enough, sometimes the accompanying figures overbalanced the ensemble. And at various points in this movementtoo, the horns seemed to be overly loud, not necessarily blending into Mahler’s carefully scored textures.

The second movement, the Scherzo with a scordatura solo-violin part, felt excessively fast for a movement the composer marked “In gemächlicher Bewegung. Ohne Hast” (“In comfortable motion.Without haste”). In the solo violin part, Robert Chen gave a valiant performance of the part on the instrument adjusted to the tuning Mahler indicated to suggest a folksy fiddle (and thus differentiate it from a violin). Overall the tempo seemed constantly bit fast, more suited in fact to the inner movements of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony rather than to this earlier work.

The following slow movement was not really convincing either. This set of double variations seemed more like a sequence of unconnected episodes than a coherent whole and while the playing was fine within independent passages and sections of the orchestra, it lacked the continuing focus implicit in the score. Mahler leads the listener through the movement as a progressive development between thematic groups and deploys increasingly longer quotations from the song-Finale which follows to culminate in a coda. Given Stenz’s penchant for bending the tempo to draw attention to particular ideas, it seemed out of character for him to take the final measures of the coda in strict tempo and without a perceptible decrease in volume as marked in the score.

The song-Finale, the orchestral song “Das himmlische Leben,” was given an extraverted reading. The tempos of the interludes between the strophes of the song were all loud and fast, while the pace was relaxed to allow Nicole Cabell to communicate the text. At times however, it was difficult to hear her with the clarity she produces for her performances at Lyric Opera of Chicago. Her experience in opera was very evident in the body language and poses she used to evoke the demeanor of a young girl, although the score gives no clue to the age of the singer.

One of the assets of the performance however was the seating of the first and second violins antiphonally - across the stage from each other - so that the passages in which the sections intertwine with each another could benefit from the increased ‘stereophonic’ effect. The harp was also moved from its customary position stage-left to the opposite side behind the violas. The new placement did not affect the sound adversely, but seemed to be a challenge for ensemble in the passages where the harp played with the low strings. Another commendable element of the performance was the soprano’s entry to the platform during the orchestral outburst at the beginning of the third movement’s coda - a nicely discreet way to manage Ms Cabell’s readiness for the fourth movement. Even so, while elements like these were certainly helpful, the interpretation did not match up to the standards of other Mahler performances at Symphony Center.

James L Zychowicz