Orchestral Orgasms and Mahler, Finding a Balance

Don’t let the conductor’s resemblance to Dr. Evil faze you. If you manage to survive the first piece of the evening—an overdone, orchestral orgasm featuring (what else?) a soprano—you are in a good position to survive the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Matthias Pintscher/Gustav Mahler program, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. The program played Carnegie Hall on Nov. 23

The first of five movements of Mahler’s Symphony Number 5 in C Sharp Minor begins with a trumpet fanfare. Out of an orchestra composed of well over a hundred people, only one musician starts playing, a move that is characteristically Mahler. The full force of the orchestra, which could knock you out of your seat, joins quickly.

Get up and back in as quickly as possible, because this is only the beginning of an hour’s entertainment filled with similarly dramatic changes in qualities—and quantities—of sound.

One of Mahler’s skills is his ability to showcase the entire orchestra—from one instrument to a string quartet to the whole stage, creating the energy of a pyrotechnics show. Even the tuba gets a solo.

Despite the democracy of his orchestrations, there seems to be a preference for the cellos. This has been the case since Beethoven, but surely Mahler takes it to a new level, contrasting melodious and orderly cello sectionals with splashes of disorienting colors from the horns and winds. After each such paroxysm, the piece manages to collect itself and regain some of its stateliness.

The other work, Matthias Pintscher’s Herodiade Fragments, which precedes the Mahler piece, features much of the same chaos and little of Mahler’s propriety.

The redeeming value of Pintscher’s piece is its success as a song: the soprano line is catchy, if not lovely in an other-worldly, ghostly way. It is hard to describe this melody—or rather, amelody—except in terms of its scope. It sends the singer from the depths of her register to the heights; from the rawest of outpourings to the sweetest of whispers, as if she were pining, yet celebrating; she is laughing to the point of tears.

A telling difference between the two works, if one can compare them, is their use of silence. Both implement one or two instruments as a means to build suspense--. Pintscher’s work is often interrupted by as many as three or four seconds of silence, which in music is an eternity. The pauses make programmatic juxtaposition of the two works a sound choice, even if Pintscher’s Fragments is a piece in which the device is ineffective.

The order of the program accounts for much of the performance’s success. Not only does it bring a well-spent evening to a close, but it is long enough and absorbing enough to dull the memory of the previous work until only its own presence stands in the mind. This is the way the concert ends--—not with a whimper, but with a bang.