The Northwest Mahler Festival performs Mahler’s Second Symphony (“Resurrection”)
Last night I attended the Northwest Mahler Festival‘s performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony (The Resurrection). The concert opened with Copland’s El Salón México and Barber’s Prayers of Kierkegaard. [Typo fixed 12:30pm]
The Copland was kind of shaky, in a way that I couldn’t quite put a finger on. The wind balance seemed a bit off, and it somehow didn’t seem to “come together”. By contrast, my knowledge of the Barber was zero, so they could’ve pulled out kazoos and I wouldn’t’ve know that something was amiss.
The Mahler demands quite a bit from both the woodwind and brass sections, but I was relieved to find that the tricky problem of getting them to play friendly appeared to be nonexistent. The Mahler “came together”. (Well, duh, this is the Northwest Mahler Festival, after all.) I was so at ease with it that I started to ignore the occasional technical error…
Performances of Mahler symphonies have a significant visual component. It’s always a blast to see the clarinets playing “Schalltrichter auf”, and for the Second, I was oddly fascinated by the rute. (I think my favorite Mahler percussion instrument is the “large hammer striking a wooden block” from the Sixth Symphony. When you see the percussionist raise that huge mallet, you know it’s coming… and when the blow finally comes, it sends shock waves through your body.)
Anyway, there’s no real point to this entry. Just babbling about a symphony concert that I found very satisfying.
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