by Paul J. Pelkonen
The Mahler groove: conductor Daniele Gatti.
Photo from DanieleGatti.Eu.
On Thursday night at Carnegie Hall, conductor Daniele Gatti led a performance that celebrates the exuberant virtuosity of Mahler’s composition, while revealing the Third as a deeply personal work. Mr. Gatti accomplished this small miracle through command of the work’s vast, ever evolving inner melodic line, and though superb playing by the combined forces of the BSO, the women of the Tanglewood Festival chorus, the BSO Children’s Chorus and mezzo-soprano Anne-Sofie von Otter.
Although he led these vast forces with a restrained, sometimes invisible beat, Mr. Gatti moved the granite-like blocks of percussion and brass with the ease of a wizard building Stonehenge. he made perfect musical sense of the triple exposition and development sequence that firms the structure of the 45-minute first movement. The deep brasses seemed to relish their turn in the spotlight, engaging in call-and-response with the horns and double basses. It was all very mysterious, but each eructation was played with purpose.
Mr. Gatti then introduced Mahler’s jaunty “summer” march tune, first in the woodwinds and then picked up by the strings. There were pleasures in the wealth of details: a few chugged chords from the cellos, the offstage snare fadeout that ends the second march. Three times the march returned, growing more insistent and more complicated as the orchestra reached a Bacchic climax. Twice, it was cut short in favor of a thematic recapitulation. When the end of the movement finally arrived, it did so with overwhelming force.
The central movements are more modest, but still had the rich tone an pointillist detail that made the opening so compelling. The delicate colors of the “flower” minuet were carefully shaded, like the fragrant blooms of Wagner’s Parsifal. In the scherzo, with the mews and lows of wild beasts were reproduced uncannily by the BSO woodwinds and horns. the off-stage post horn solo was played with clear, pure tone, answered by the bass clarinet.
Mahler turns his cosmic lens on humanity in the fourth movement,. this dead slow, meditative setting of “O mensch, gib’ Acht!”, the Midnight Song from Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra was sung with nobility and a total lack of sentiment by Ms. Von Otter, sensitively accompanied by Mr, Gatti and the rumbling, growling orchestra. The women's and boys’ choir joined Ms. von Otter for the fifth movement, a deceptively cheerful view of the afterlife drawn form the poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
Mr. Gatti summoned every last resource to conduct the sixth and final movement, a sweeping, meditative adagio. Here, the tough jagged peaks of the opening are rounded into smooth, swooping curves of sound. With careful guidance of the double basses and horns, Mr. Gatti maintained momentum through the enormous lengths of this finale, reaching the climactic timpani rolls and cymbal clashes that mirror the e repeats of the massive opening. Serenity was achieved in the final coda, led with a rich glow of orchestral sound and a sense of accomplishment. Orchestra and conductor had climbed Mahler’s mountain of sound, and planted their flag at its peak.
