Time, which has a way
of sneaking up on all of us, has transformed
erstwhile Wunderkind Michael
Tilson Thomas into a high-profile podium
veteran. That Boston Symphony concert
which thrust him into prominence, when
he took over from a suddenly ill William
Steinberg, was in 1969 - nearly forty
years ago! If we didn't notice, perhaps
it was because he hasn't always recorded
much. Thomas's permanent affiliations
with world-class orchestras were only
intermittent - the major record outfits
didn't consider the worthy, hard-working
Buffalo Philharmonic enough of a draw,
save in Gershwin and the like. But I
suspect that the conductor also kept
a relatively low profile by choice,
only bringing individual projects that
"spoke" to him - scores by Tchaikovsky,
by Debussy, by Ruggles - into the recording
studio, resisting the temptation to
crank out repertoire works in batches,
as the majors used to prefer. His chamber-scaled
Beethoven symphony cycle for CBS (now
Sony) was an exception. So is his current
project, a Mahler symphony series recorded
in concert with his San Francisco Symphony
and distributed on the orchestra's own
label.
On first hearing, this
Resurrection is promising. The
recorded sound, first of all, makes
an immediate impact, not just in the
big climaxes - which "breathe" quite
nicely - but in the subtler details:
woodwind doublings register as daubs
of color within a clear, resiny string
presence, with a soupçon of
ambience enhancing the well-defined
instrumental images. The "layering"
of onstage and offstage instruments
in the Finale sounds unusually clear
and natural.
In the performance's
best moments, Thomas gets his players
to project their parts with fresh intensity.
Every note of the opening bass flourishes
is crisply, attentively articulated,
avoiding any hint of routine; similarly,
the double-dotted rhythms in the development
are carefully and precisely sculpted.
The moderately paced scherzo has a nice
whirling quality and a buoyant one-in-a-bar
swing. In the Finale, I rather liked
the strings' alert observation of accents,
giving some shape to the bass ostinati
at 0:21 and the tremolos at 6:02 and
following.
But Thomas's attention
to detail isn't always convincing. He
observes all the printed markings in
the first movement's C major theme (2:44),
yet it emerges as tentative and unfeeling;
and those sculpted double-dottings later
on hold back the music's forward impulse.
The Andante occasionally suggests
lilting grace, but it mostly just sits
inertly, save when the conductor applies
"expressive" tenutos that sound
right in the tune but break the flow
of the counter-themes; the triplet episodes
are stolid. In the scherzo, the protracted
ritards at each return of the main motif
become tiresome and predictable. In
short, the performance, at least in
the first three movements, keeps hitting
dead spots.
Things improve after
the singing starts. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
sings Urlicht eloquently, though
hers is strictly speaking the wrong
"instrument," a lyric mezzo where an
earth-mother contralto is called for.
(Do clarinettists play the Mozart horn
concerti?) The Finale's opening outburst
is powerful, the death-march (after
a prolonged percussion crescendo)
springy and thrusting. The first choral
invocation is unduly drawn out, but
the blend is good - the tenors don't
stick out, as they sometimes can - and,
with the engineers' connivance, Isabel
Bayrakdarian's soprano rises out of
the chorus, as the composer requested,
more effectively than I've ever heard
before. The interplay of melodic strands
in the orchestral interludes is lovely;
the solo voices are stunningly matched
in their duet; and - once the fugal
choral entries settle into a tempo -
the final build-up is impressive.
The orchestra is, frankly,
disappointing. A full-bodied core of
brass sound makes for solid, ringy tuttis.
But the horns sound uncharacteristically
deadpan and subdued elsewhere, even
where they should draw the ear, as in
their premonition of the march theme
(first movement, 13:34). The strings,
in general, are wan and diffuse. The
violins' pianissimos are too
soft in absolute terms - the low ends
of their moving passages in the scherzo
simply disappear - but even their crescendos
lack presence and substance. The orchestra's
playing isn't as tidy on their previous
recording, under Herbert Blomstedt (Decca),
but their warm (but not indiscriminately
luscious!) ensemble sonority there,
with its well-focused strings and vivid
shafts of woodwind and horn color, stands
as a rebuke to this paler sound.
On the basis of this
Resurrection - the only instalment
I've heard of the SFSO cycle - and his
Klagende Lied for RCA Red Seal,
I'm not convinced that Thomas, a onetime
Bernstein protégé, has
inherited his former mentor's identification
with this composer, nor are his flashes
of insightful detail enough to add up
to a consistently absorbing performance.
One wishes the San Francisco Symphony
success with their record label, but
I hope everyone concerned can do better
than this.
Stephen Francis
Vasta
Isabel Bayrakdarian (soprano) 
SAN
FRANCISCO SYMPHONY 821936-0006-2 [23.19
+ 54.43] 
