'A whole universe in every piece'

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony bring Mahler to Severance Hall

by Jason Victor Serinus

Cleveland-Even as Michael Tilson Thomas prepares to record Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony and perform it in Cleveland, the San Francisco Symphony's SFS Media label releases his orchestra's live recording of Mahler's happiest symphony, Symphony No. 4. The fourth offering in the San Francisco Symphony's ongoing Mahler series, the single CD offers glorious sound and musicianship and the option of superior SACD surround sound playback. In conversation with Tilson Thomas some time back, the gay conductor laid out his goals for Mahler performance and recording:

"Mahler's purpose, as he says so often, is to create a whole world, a whole universe, in every piece,” he said. “In something particularly as large as a Mahler symphony, there is a cinematographic element involved. Mahler wants some things to ap-

pear in a very diffused perspective, and others very sharp and direct. Fighting for those kinds of balances in the orchestra is something I'm very much committed to."

"I'm also committed to live recording because I like the sweep that happens in a whole performance," he continued. "As a kind of acoustic cinematographer, I try to work with our recording producer to anticipate certain issues of space, breath of sound, and focus of sound many things that can happen in the course of the piece."

Mahler marked his first movement “Deliberately. Do not hurry.” Tilson Thomas takes this indication (as well as all of Mahler's subsequent instructions) seriously. The opening is quite laid back; whenever the tempo quickens momentarily, the orchestra soon returns to a leisurely pace. The conductor gives ample time to savor Mahler's sleigh bells, his quasi-chamber music ride on a sunny day. San Francisco's players luxuriate in the music's textures, the winds especially fine. Even when the music becomes increasingly clouded, threatening to break into yet another outpouring of Mahler's perpetual angst, it suddenly stops in its tracks; after telling silence, the sleigh ride continues as if nothing had happened. Tilson Thomas savors the movement's conclusion, as it first seems to end then restart very slowly to build to a rousing climax.

Alma Mahler, Gustav's wife and a composer in her own right until hubby put a stop to her music writing, said of the second movement, "the composer was under the spell of the self-portrait by Arnold Böcklin, in which Death fiddles into the painter's ear while the latter sits entranced." This is a very playful Death, one who toys with termination rather than pulling the plug. His Totentanz becomes a waltz "In easy motion. Without haste" wrote Mahler-as he seems to dance out of view, allowing us to savor the sweetness a bit longer. The playing is exemplary.

Tilson Thomas' start to the great third movement Adagio ("Peacefully") is so heartfelt and warm it makes one want to cry. San Francisco's violins superbly maintain a long, sustained high note that offers promise of stretching into infinity before gently descending from the heights. Even when the music becomes mournful, then tragic, Tilson Thomas gently reconnects us to the symphony's overriding sweetness. The end unfolds as a glorious sonic spectacle, triangle and timpani resounding as heaven's gates open to welcome us.

The "very leisurely” fourth movement is a soprano setting of a Bavarian folk song from the Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn) poetry collection that so influenced the development of Mahler's first four symphonies. The music to the song, "Heaven is Hung with Violins," was first sketched in 1892, seven years before Mahler began to compose the rest of the symphony. As such, this final movement must be understood as the raison d'être "the tapering Pinnacle" as Mahler told a friend of the symphony as a whole.

Tilson Thomas noted, "There are enormous storytelling aspects to Mahler's music. It's as though he's telling a story to a child. He must have had a grandmother or someone who told him stories, and he remembered the way someone in their voice can set up the wonder of what is going to come next. It's as though how, as a child, you can hear [whispering with increasing softness] 'and then the two brothers disappeared into the forest and no one saw them anymore.' Just then, the storyteller deliberately sets people up to be delighted or surprised or scared, and there's a delight that stays with you. No matter how many times you've heard the piece and you know it's coming, it still delights you. Or it should anyway."

The orchestra segues seamlessly into Mahler's heavenly dimension. Mahler specifically requested “a singing voice with a gay, childlike sound, but entirely free from parody" for this child's description of an unquestionably glutinous, meat-laden heavenly paradise.

Though soprano Laura Claycomb, usually associated with high-flying coloratura roles, provides requisite sweetness and soul, her singing cannot compare with Lorin Maazel's Kathleen Battle (ideally innocent and small, yet filled with wonder and rapt expression) and George Szell's Judith Raskin (mature sounding at first, but miraculously transcendent and radiant as she sings "There is no music on earth that can be compared to ours. The angelic voices gladden our senses, so that everything awakes to pleasure”).

In part this is the conductor's responsibility; the magical slowdown of the start of the final verse heard in many versions, or the orchestral punctuations between verses that in Bernstein's hands (with the New York Philharmonic) sound like a child pouting, here seem absent. San Francisco's horns drolly underscore St. Luke's slaughter of the ox, making them sound drunk with wine, but the violins virtually overlook the fish gladly swimming along. Tilson Thomas laudably never upstages his soloist (here far more audible than in live performance), but neither does he succeed in drawing from her the ultimate and indispensable heaven-sent statement. Tilson Thomas and SFS have just launched a five-year multi-media project designed to "change the climate of national opinion regarding classical music and to make the music more accessible and enjoyable to a wider range of audiences." Look for their late spring two-part PBS Great Performances exploration of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony are performing in Severance Hall until March 20. For tickets or more information log onto www.clevelandorch.com or call 216231-7300.

March 19, 2004 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11