KVT – “VNSO Mahler Cycle” 100 Years Anniversary

MAHLER TRIUMPHS AGAIN

The first time I came across Mahler’s First Symphony was when I was driving along a gravel road, across softly undulating prairies, in southern Manitoba, Canada. The first movement was a slow and misted call into that warm, summer morning and after its joyfully, wild conclusion I crawled the car to a halt, turned the radio volume up to its max and let the melodic waltz of the second movement float free with the warm winds, up and over a field of sky blue flax on one side, and an expanse of prairie grass on the other that flowed in gentle green waves. The third movement eased into its Frere Jacques like melody and delicately swelled as the tune was played in rounds by various instruments and then dispersed into folk melodies that seemed so much at home there in that part of the prairies where large colonies of German speaking Hutterites still practiced their wiles and ways of their late 19th Century central European homelands. A town of prairie dogs (gophers) was on a nearby rise and the small animals came from underground and stood at the mouths of their burrows as if in audience to Mahler. Then, when the final movement crashed and cymbaled to its momentous conclusion, they seemed to pause, noses questing the breezes, and then dove, en-masse, back to subterranean worlds.

Last night at the Opera House the VNSO, under the baton of its wonderful conductor Ong Honna, gave us a very admirable interpretation of the work. My imagination placed a huge, white canvas behind the orchestra and as the four movements melded into each other, an artist- also invisible- with huge brushes slithered and swashed and splashed and smoothed and speckled and swirled paint over it until as the final chord sounded it was an exuberant, exultant, expressionistic masterpiece.
I was so glad that I’ve never been a Star Wars Series fan because the second movement may have pushed my imagination onto the bridge of Starship Enterprise (apparently it’s the soundtrack in Episode 10, season 5 )….though I wonder if it worked as effectively as Richard Strauss’ ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’ or ‘The Blue Danube’ did in Kubrick’s ‘2010 A Space Odyssey’.

If I was a devotee of a certain Manga type space cartoon series, the symphony’s third movement may have had me in outer space again, exploring new planets and fighting strange foes.

The east European street and folk melodies in the third movement almost sent me into a ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ side trip and I guessed its composer, Jerry Brock, was as big a Mahler fan as I am.

As the last movement drew to its wonderful climax the horns and trumpets were on their feet, soaring their voices over the heads of the other musicians. Fabulous stuff!

Honna didn’t deign to give us bravo-ing audience an encore. And after a Mahler like that, who would want to spoil the lingering after effects? Seriously… who’d enjoy a glass or two of Chateau Mouton Rothschild Pauillac 1986 and then allow the succulent aftertaste to be washed away with anything less?

The night began superbly and appropriately with a performance of Mahler’s ‘Songs of a Wayfarer’. Appropriate because the second and fourth songs of the cycle are featured in the following Symphony. And beautiful songs they were, sung by Japanese baritone Katsunori Kono accompanied by the orchestra….with that wonderful harp singing through. The baritone’s voice did, as Mahler intended, and interwove itself seamlessly with the texture of the orchestra. Awesome!

It was truly a night to cherish.

The VNSO has really become sophisticated. Its web site is great, its program for the night was excellent and the graphics used are really striking. It all befits an orchestra that is really on its way (this year as far as Boston, I hear).

The program notes on Mahler, the First, and The Wayfarer, by Michael Bosworth, were excellent and informative.

The VNSO’s very usable 2011 program is available and it looks as though we classical music lovers are in for a stimulating year. And at the low cost ticket prices we are charged…due to some welcome ongoing and one off sponsorships…who’d be silly enough not to be a regular attendee of the VNSO symphonies and ensembles?