Oundjian and Civic outstanding in Mahler’s bizarro Seventh
It was Deryck Cooke who labeled the Seventh, “Mahler’s mad, mad symphony,” and it’s hard for even the most ardent Mahler admirer to disagree.
Cast on the largest scale at eighty minutes, like many of Mahler’s works in the genre, it is a progression from darkness to light, but with even more tangled brambles en route than usual. Opening with a vast movement with the feeling of an unsettling military slow march, the Seventh segues into the first of two nachtmusiks, a malign nocturnal “night patrol.” A massive scherzo cast in the composer’s acidulous distortion of Landler and populist waltzes is the centerpiece, followed by the second nachtmusik, a lightly scored serenade-like respite replete with guitar and mandolin. The work closes with one of Mahler’s most garrulous creations, a rambunctious finale that ends the work optimistically while serving up more reverse curveballs and false endings than Sinfonia domestica.
Even with its excesses—or because of them— Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 provides a daunting marathon workout for an orchestra, and received an outstanding performance by Peter Oundjian and the Civic Orchestra Monday night at Symphony Center.
Oundjian, who will wrap up an accomplished subscription debut with the CSO Tuesday night, was, in some ways, even more impressive in his stand with the Civic. Making this most intractable of symphonies come off successfully is no mean feat, even for a seasoned professional orchestra. Yet under the Canadian conductor’s idiomatic direction, Oundjian and the Civic musicians served up a well played, vital and characterful performance that need make few apologies for the ensemble’s youth orchestra status.
Oundjian clearly has an inspired touch with Mahler, allowing all the strangenesses to register with firm impact, and pointing up the lyric nostalgic ache while avoiding schmaltz. He elicited notably transparent textures and, most essential in this Leviathan, kept a keen forward momentum with few longeurs on the vast journey. Only the ramshackle conclusion didn’t quite come off, with Oundjian a bit too respectful of Mahler’s markings. At some point in this wayward music, you just have to put your head down and bulldoze through to the coda as best one can.
The Civic musicians gave Oundjian some of their finest and most responsive playing of the season. There were a few bobbles along the way and some chaotic moments but the young musicians for the most part distinguished themselves superbly in this difficult score. Distinctive solo contributions were provided by trumpeter Colin Oldberg, hornist Anna Spina, oboist Daniel Glynn, flutist Elizabeth Delorit, concertmaster Azusa Tashiro, and violist Adam Neeley.
Oundjian has earned himself a date back with the Chicago Symphony by virtue of his fine concerts this past week. It would be interesting to see what this gifted Mahlerian can accomplish with the CSO in this repertoire.
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Posted Feb 10, 2010 at 4:44 am by MaRGARET Watkinson
WHAT A FABULOUS REVIEW- I ONLY WISH THAT WE COULD HAVE COME FROM MAINE TO HEAR IT OURSELVES! CONGRATULATIONS FOR BRINGING OUT THE BEST IN THESE MUSICIANS AND TO EVERYONE FOR THEIR HARD WORK!