Chicago Classical Review

Time will tell what kind of programming Klaus Mäkelä will bring to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its audiences. But one thing is already certain—music of Gustav Mahler will no longer be a grudging obligation under this music director.

Mäkelä led Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in his CSO sophomore stand, following that with the Third Symphony. For the middle program of his fall residency, Mäkelä is taking on his most daunting Mahler assignment to date, leading a performance of the Symphony No. 9 Thursday night.

The Austrian composer’s final completed work is a vast and complex canvas spanning 85 minutes. Outwardly set in the traditional four movements, Mahler’s working out could not be more untraditional—two half-hour slow movements framing a rustic Ländler and edgy Scherzo, likewise morphed into outsized dimensions.

In a conversation last week Mäkelä said that he thought Mahler‘s Ninth is a work that has become “overcharged” with extra-musical meaning, not always to the symphony’s benefit. 

History accounts for much of this. Mahler had been diagnosed with the heart disease that would end his life in three years at age 50, and much of the Ninth seems imbued with an elegiac intensity. The two-note motif that dominates the opening movement virtually says farewell (“Leb wohl”) and the score often seems like the composer’s adieu to earthly life, noting its darkness and mendacity as much as its passing pleasures and beauties.   

From the first notes of the opening movement Thursday night,  one had the sense that this was a Mahler Nine more concerned with coherence than cosmology. The Finnish conductor seemed intent on shearing off excess weight—sonically as well as interpretively. The sighing motto theme unfolded in a natural, songful way, neither turbo-charged nor unduly laden with emotion.

The dark-hued development went with ample edge and energy without ever feeling forced or overdriven. Mäkelä skillfully maintained a flowing line drawing striking clarity; one heard scoring details often subsumed in the rich textures—the baleful muted trumpets, a brief lilting oboe line. The storm-tossed turbulence and mounting climaxes were powerful and duly imposing, kaleidoscopic in their color and brilliance. The movement’s quiet close received feathery-light string playing and lovely violin solos by concertmaster Robert Chen.

The ensuing quasi-Ländler went with jaunty panache, varied episodes sharply contrasted, and piquant comic charm in the coda. The Rondo-Burleske had ample fire and anarchic vehemence, with the whirling coda whipped up to a half-crazed frenzy. The gentle folkish melody at the center provided a refined, stoic contrast.

The concluding Adagio continued and extended the humane qualities of the preceding movements. Mäkelä avoided overheated passions in the finale in favor of a simple eloquence and sincerity, the long paragraphs unfolding logically, but also with a sincerity and heart-easing warmth. (His new layout for the orchestra—cellos inside, violas outside—appeared to enhance the burnished warmth of the strings.)

The long, final diminuendo felt not tragic on this occasion but stoic and moving, a conscious, dry-eyed leave-taking of earthly existence for, hopefully, something more elevated and rewarding.

Premature applause spoiled the quiet ending of the Shostakovich Fourth Symphony last week when it was obvious that Mäkelä wanted to hold the silence. One dreaded a similar occurrence in the long final fade of the Ninth, but, fortunately, Thursday night’s audience showed consummate respect to the CSO musicians, their conductor and Mahler’s music.  After the last, fragmented ppp string phrases had faded to silence—beautifully played with utmost sensitivity under Mäkelä’s direction—the conductor, head bowed, held the silence for what seemed like a full two minutes, allowing Mahler’s glowing coda to hang in the air with nary a cough or peep from those in attendance.

This was a most impressive performance, giving us Mäkelä’s most successful and individual Mahler outing to date. At times one may have wanted a greater degree of mystery—as with the dialogue between solo flute and horn near the end of the first movement—or a more penetrating gaze into the bleaker pages of the abyss. But for only his third time out with this challenging score, Mäkelä’s interpretation is already a considerable achievement, and one looks forward to even deeper and more rewarding performances in the years to come.

The CSO musicians delivered extraordinary playing across every section and nearly every desk for their incoming chief. The strings were especially eloquent with violist Teng Li and concertmaster Chen, especially, delivering hyper-sensitive playing in the finale.

The musicianship was not entirely inspired across the board. Guest principal flute Alison Fierst, associate flute of the New York Philharmonic, played in polished, workmanlike fashion but with fitful sharpness of tone, and one would have liked greater purity and eloquence in her flute solos.

More crucially, it’s time to face the hard reality that the appointment of Mark Almond as principal horn by Riccardo Muti on his way out the door has proven disastrous. Almond remains Muti’s worst CSO hire, a grievous error that was compounded by hastily and undeservedly granting him tenure. 

Yes, the horn solos and writing in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony are intensely demanding and Almond played some of his spotlit moments capably Thursday night, albeit with his usual dry, papery tone. Yet the British musician also had several lapses, some of them minor; but with his previous shaky and inconsistent playing over the past three years, it’s time to finally admit that this is a problem that is not going away, and start dealing with it before Mäkelä officially takes the reins as music director next fall.

Meanwhile the CSO’s superb and popular former principal horn David Cooper—who was denied tenure by Muti—is the new principal horn of the New York Philharmonic. Chicago’s loss is New York’s gain.

The program will be repeated 1:30 p.m. Friday, 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. chicagosymphony.org

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