Boston Classical Review

There was something fitting about the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra offering Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 on Sunday at Symphony Hall. It wasn’t just because the sleigh bells at the start of its first movement gave a musical voice to the Nor’easter that was dumping all manner of precipitation across the region that afternoon.

Rather, it was the fact that this is music that takes the long view and does so with a mix of unobtrusive charm and subversive ingenuity. With Benjamin Zander on the podium this weekend, those latter qualities, especially, came out vividly.

In a sense, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony delivers a kaleidoscopic deconstruction of the orchestra. Though it calls for a big ensemble, that group is rarely employed full-force. Instead, an assortment of musical styles—jaunty, Haydnesque tunes; devilish fiddle music; radiant chorales; and a folk song depicting a child’s vision of heaven among them—are treated to all manner of discreet and unusual instrumental combinations as a chamber music-like aspect prevails throughout.

No wonder the Fourth’s first audience in 1901 was more than a little perplexed by the effort. The attentive music-making by Zander and the Philharmonic ensured that Sunday’s house was considerably less offended and could fully appreciate the singular genius of Mahler’s creativity.

There was a consistent sense of character and direction to the orchestra’s playing. The first movement’s rambling, conversational aspect emerged as a fascinating, multidimensional entity while the text paintings in the closing song were conspicuously stylish.

Tempos unfolded just as they should. The scherzo—led by concertmaster Gregory Vitale’s acerbic, scordatura solos—tripped with impressively light feet and the finale moved with purpose. Some fitfully suspect intonation aside, the latter’s setting of “Wir geniessen die himmlischen Freuden,” was delivered by soprano Claire Booth with alluringly pure tone.

Thanks in part to a keen attention to dynamics, the afternoon’s performance also occupied an almost visceral sense of musical space. This was nowhere more affecting than in the glorious Poco adagio, which materialized like a cathedral of sound: a repository for beauty, memory, and mystery.

Taken together, Sunday’s was a Mahler Fourth of enchantment and innocence mixed, especially over its first three movements, with strong touches of pathos. Nothing may be truly simple or easy, it seemed to suggest, but a touch of childlike wonder goes a long way.

Meantime, the program’s other half, Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, was steeped in nostalgia and resignation. Written just a year before the composer’s death at 85, these settings of poems by Herman Hesse and Josef von Eichendorff reflect on what William S. Gilbert once labeled “the autumn of our lives.” Sumptuous and beautiful, they make no concession to contemporaneous events: in the middle of completing the set, Strauss was cleared of wrongdoing by his denazification tribunal. Instead, the tetrad seeks—and finds—refuge in otherworldly repose.

Sunday’s account was anchored by the excellence of the BPO’s playing. The collective was beautifully unified: their introduction to “Im Abendroth” was luminous and the end of the same faultlessly blended.

Along the way, Zander illuminated Strauss’s sometimes thick textures with a knowing hand. The woodwinds in “September,” the strings in “Beim Schlafengehen,” the various solos (particularly from concertmaster Vitale and principal horn Kevin Owen), all sang touchingly.

From time to time, the orchestra covered Booth’s contributions, especially her mid-register utterances. Though the light tone of her instrument didn’t stand a chance of cutting through the larger ensemble, the soprano managed the high notes—especially the soaring lines of “Frühling”—with effortless clarity.

The Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra performs Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 on March 2 at Symphony Hall. bostonphil.org

Posted in Performances

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