Since entering the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s repertory 48 years ago, Gustav Mahler’s vast, monumental Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”) has become a signature blockbuster for our orchestra, a celebration of its muscular prowess. Every Mahlerian who is anybody has conducted it here. And the Last Trump has yet to be uttered.
Thursday night at Orchestra Hall, a somewhat weather-depleted audience heard the “Resurrection” according to Bernard Haitink. The past two weeks of concerts have been love feasts between the eminent Dutch conductor and the CSO musicians, and this performance was no exception. To claim that every member of the orchestra played as if his or her life depended on it may be an exaggeration. But the respect for his musical integrity and the desire to realize his interpretative vision to the smallest nuance were clearly there, and they helped make this a special occasion.
Mahler Second was, at the time it was premiered, in 1895, the most ambitious symphony ever written. In five movements employing two vocal soloists, mixed chorus and huge orchestra, Mahler attempts to set out, through music, a philosophy of life that deals with the most overwhelming questions of human existence. Why do we live? Why do we suffer? In the massive choral finale he arrives at an answer by invoking the Christian belief in immortality through God’s grace.
Mahler’s ambitious scenario takes us from the depths of his angst-ridden soul to the heavenly heights of affirmation. Haitink’s version, however, shuns the work’s overt theatricality, its sprawling, over-the-top rhetoric. He is the most moderate of Mahlerians; some ears would find him overly rigid and impersonal. He gave us every detail of Mahler’s complex sound-fresco. With his superb balancing of texture and his clear view of the work’s epic horizons, he showed us how beautifully the musical argument comes together. What we were given was the “Resurrection” as pure music, no small achievement in itself.
The first four movements were low-keyed–some would say low-voltage–with Haitink holding back the sonorous power of the CSO until Mahler’s apocalypse required it. Often the orchestra achieved its most satisfying effects not by how loudly it played but by how quietly. The funeral march held to a steady, deliberate tempo, Haitink keeping the big climax firmly in his sights. He also coaxed some echt-Viennese slides from the cellos in the minuet, although he also carried Mahler’s tempo marking (“do not hurry”) too far. A light, crisp, transparent Scherzo led to a rather prosaic “Urlicht” from mezzo-soprano Markella Hatziano, who didn’t really sound like a child who thinks she is in heaven.
If the offstage brass were inaudible in parts of the finale, and the stalwart Chicago Symphony Chorus did not always sing in tune with itself, this movement came off the best; it was masterfully shaped, fleshed out with all manner of thoughtful instrumental touches. Sylvia McNair’s sweet, clear-toned soprano rose like the voice of an angel from the choral multitudes.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
