Mahler’s Third Symphony
a tall order

VSO once-in-a-lifetime concert
is a must-hear event

by David Gordon Duke

Before 1960 almost none of Gustav Mahler’s music was heard in North America; today it’s a rare season that does not feature one of the more popular (and affordable) of his symphonies and orchestral song sets. On Saturday and Monday the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra inaugurates the fall concert season with a true extravaganza: Mahler’s sprawling Third Symphony. Listeners get to hear a gigantic band of instrumentalists, a mezzo soprano soloist, and a women’s choir, plus a children’s ensemble thrown in for good measure.

They're also in for over an hour and a half of music. It’s a tall order.

Conceived in the mid-1890s, the Third set out to challenge established notions of the symphony. Most obviously, there are six movements rather than the the usual four. Paradox and contrast abound. Despite the huge forces and a wealth of truly cataclysmic fortissimos— which just don't work on your home sound system, however expensive— the Third is filled with intimate detail. The most influential moments, in a score that inspired composers as disparate as Webern and Britten, Copland and Shostakovich, are Mahler’s striking passages for what amount to chamber ensembles. The work is encompassing enough to range all the way from Nietzsche to naive folk poetry and sections that sound like Klezmer ensembles gone wrong.

For all its length, partisans would argue that it’s just long enough. Mahler’s turn-of-the-20th-century audiences, familiar with Wagner and Bruckner, were more up for the long haul than contemporary North Americans. VSO Maestro Bramwell Tovey has made the wise executive decision to keep the concert "short" by performing just the symphony: No intermission, and no companion work to pad out the evening.

Vancouver listeners may well want to consider pacing. Mahler’s first movement, itself as long as most classical symphonies, uses two contrasting marches to ground the entire work and define its epic scale. Movements two and three are charmers, but not without drama and surprise; movements four, five, and six have their own interconnected logic. The philosophical core of the work is finally revealed by the Nietzsche text of the ravishing fourth movement featuring mezzo soprano. Movement five is short, sweet gemutlich music for women’s and children’s voices. Then comes the conclusion— the symphony’s revolutionary, very slow finale. Just how slow varies from conductor to conductor: performances of this resplendent paean to love can run from just under 20 to over 25 minutes.

Last season the VSO worked hard and successfully to recruit new listeners and to bring old friends back to the Orpheum. This season may prove to be about stretching horizons. Mahler’s Third is close enough to a once-in-a lifetime concert to make this programme a must- hear event.

Vancouver Sun
2 Oct. 2004

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