When Simon Rattle last conducted in the Chicago area, in 1979, he was a mop-haired wunderkind of 24 who had the chutzpah to make his Chicago Symphony debut with music by Mahler. It was a case of not enough, too soon.
Between that local calling-card concert and now, he shucked the wunderkind manner, became principal conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and succeeded in transforming a provincial British Midlands orchestra into an international ensemble. In a sense, they came of age musically together.
On Tuesday Sir Simon Rattle brought his Birmingham orchestra to Symphony Center for the first of two concerts, part of his “farewell tour” with the band he has headed for 18 seasons. Lo and behold, he again conducted Mahler. This time around, the results were very different.
Truth be told, one went into Tuesday’s concert somewhat skeptical. While many of their EMI recordings are very fine, surely British music critics have overpraised the Rattle-Birmingham partnership, one thought. But their gripping account of the Mahler Symphony No. 7 and their freshly rethought new recording of the Mahler Symphony No. 4 silenced doubt. With his youthful zeal on the podium, Rattle reveled in the Mahler Seventh’s life-affirming qualities, but not at the price of poetry or refinement.
The Seventh has always been a problem piece. To many it has seemed at once overblown in scale and modest in emotion–small wonder it is the least-performed of the Mahler symphonies. Even if you accept the retrospective, deja vu nature of the five-movement symphony, with its twin “Nachtmusik” movements flanking a shadowy Scherzo, the finale can seem baffling. Mahler’s wild mood swings, his lapses into bombast and banality, push this giant Rondo perilously close to a bizarre pastiche of the final scene of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger.”
Rattle succeeded by embracing the contradictions, not denying them. In his hands, the symphony became a 78-minute rite of passage from ominous darkness to strident optimism. In the opening movement he molded the central idyll with much ravishing rubato, showing off the sweet tonal quality of his string choir, not to mention his cleanly disciplined woodwinds. Strings were seated according to the classical plan espoused here by Daniel Barenboim–all the better to clarify the violins’ dialogue effects. This is a relatively young orchestra, and they indeed play with the daring of youth; Mahler’s music thrives on that.
In the three inner movements, Rattle’s refinement made sure no detail was obscured, no effect taken for granted. True, faltering horn solos reminded us that all brass sections are not created equal. But the manic delirium of the Scherzo could hardly have been better judged, with just enough of a mocking edge to the clarinet. All this stood in marked contrast to the second “night music” with its delicate atmosphere of guitar and mandolin. As for that intractable finale, the greater Mahler’s musical excesses, the more eagerly Rattle’s players seemed to throw themselves into the sonic fray.
Rattle’s careful championing of new music is a central part of his Birmingham legacy. He brought us a complex yet rewarding piece of recent British music, Oliver Knussen’s Symphony No. 3 (1979). This “Ophelia” symphony, played with genuine flair, proved a fine postscript to the Knussen scores the composer presented here during his March CSO residency.
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A second Rattle concert of works by Rameau, Haydn and Beethoven was scheduled for Wednesday.
