Something of a musical milestone took place the other day at Lynn University when the school’s conservatory orchestra, accompanied by two soloists and the Master Chorale of South Florida, gave two performances of Gustav Mahler’s gigantic Resurrection Symphony (No. 2 in C minor).
These performances had actually been planned for the 2012-13 season, but Lynn’s hosting of one of the Obama-Romney debates forced the school to reschedule. And so they did, leaving Mahler for the sixth and final Lynn Philharmonia concert of the current season, to be led by the Lynn Philharmonia’s new director, Guillermo Figueroa.
The concert on Saturday evening, March 22, at the Wold Performing Arts Center, had a feeling of epic events and reverence, with a sold-out hall and a stage crammed to bursting with around 150 or 160 people in the last two movements of the work. Figueroa, in lengthy remarks to his audience, talked about what a special occasion this was, and said he planned to conduct it as Mahler requested, with a pause of at least 5 minutes between the first movement and the rest of the work; he asked that no applause come before or after this unusual intermission, and none did.
What the audience heard was a Mahler Two that was very good in its fundamental elements. The young musicians in Lynn’s conservatory can play this work; the various instrumental soloists played quite well, and there was a gratifyingly large string complement to balance out the big brass and wind sections, and the elaborate percussion battery. The two soloists, soprano Abigail Santos Villalobos and mezzo Gabriela García, sang well, as did the chorus.
Aside from an early timpani entrance, there were no major missteps, and the occasional note flubs were more or less to be expected from such a long and demanding piece given by a student-community entourage. In fact, it was remarkably good overall, and the conservatory was able to demonstrate that its players can handle the biggest pieces and handle them well.
What was missing overall was interpretive maturity, which would be a lot to ask for a bunch of musicians new to the experience of performing it, but which on the other hand could be expected from Figueroa. And while he had clear command of his forces and an obvious commitment to the music, this Mahler Second had very little of the sense of space or drama that is so critical to making this composer’s unique brand of stylistic abundance come across.
This was easiest to see in the fourth and fifth movements, which were rushed through, a decision that took all of the epic quality out of the music, beautiful as it was. Those two movements range from hushed chorale prayer to a thundercrack, to trumpet calls in vast spaces, and to an inexorable, irresistible ecstasy at the very end. All the music was in place, but the grand line, as Nadia Boulanger used to call it, that macro-architecture that makes Mahler work, was missing, largely because things were pushed along rather than explored, driven home rather than experienced.
Surely part of that was due to conductor and orchestra taking a journey together for the first time, and it was heartening to see such intensity on the part of the student players, and to see them observe every Mahlerian indication, including Schalltrichter auf!, in which he directs the winds and brasses to lift their bells into the air while playing. One of the best moments overall came in the second movement when the strings were by themselves; their playing of this pretty little Austrian country dance had a warmth and naturalness to it that was engaging. And there was much well-deserved applause at the end for the chief wind and brass soloists, particularly flute and oboe. Mahler alternates enormous orchestral outbursts with the most delicate chamber music, and the young players in the spotlight for those moments responded admirably.
In the first movement, string ensemble was iffy at first, and the first C major contrasting section was rather too slow, and the bumptious primary material — the march rhythms and the C minor melodic scale fragments — were too smooth, too integrated; it needed to be brusque, violent and surprising. The second movement, as mentioned, was notable for the beauty of the string playing, and in the third, a recycling of Mahler’s song about St. Anthony’s sermon to the fishes (aside from the early timpani entrance before the second movement was quite complete), the contrast between the good clarinet and violin slithering of the first pages and the brutal explosions of the middle was not broad enough to be completely effective.
García, who has to open the fourth movement alone, without key preparation and without onstage warmup, had a little trouble at first, but hers is a nicely colored instrument that was a pleasure to hear. This, too, was where the opening tempo could have been just a bit slower, a bit more solemn, to make the boldness of Mahler’s conception linger (there was good brass work and fine oboe playing here).
The finale was distinguished by some good singing from García and soprano Santos, a musician with a big, resonant voice whose fine quality was evident from the first high note above the chorus. The Master Chorale, well-drilled by director Brett Karlin, was slightly tentative on its first modulations, but strong and granitic when it reached Sterben werd’ich, and a few moments later, when García and Santos joined in on the climactic Aufersteh’n, there was a palpable sense of transcendence in the hall, and there were faces on stage in transport.
After the enormous ending E-flat chord, Figueroa leaned back on his podium, spent, as well he should have been. His pacing was too hasty for the fourth and fifth movements, as I’ve noted, but he did a terrific job in marshaling all these forces and bringing it off as well as he did. Because even if this reading of the work missed some of Mahler’s grandeur, this simple fact remains: A student orchestra and community chorus in South Florida performed the Mahler Second Symphony.
That’s cause for celebration, and while the upcoming 2014-15 season doesn’t hold anything really comparable, the Lynn Conservatory of Music has set a standard for itself that should stand unchallenged for some time.