Sleigh Bells Ring in Mahler's Music at Carnegie

The last time Gustav Mahler ever conducted his own music was in January 1911, four months before his death at the age of 51. The piece was his Fourth Symphony (among the most popular in the composer's day), performed by the Philharmonic Society of New York. The venue was Carnegie Hall. It was this magnificent work that Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra performed at Stern Auditorium as the second half of a well-proportioned program last Tuesday.

The Fourth Symphony-the last in Mahler's early period-is probably the most immediately accessible thing Mahler ever wrote. From its opening bells and flute to the ecstatic vision of "Das himmlische Leben" (a mother goose-style picnic in heaven), it is the lightest and most unburdened. For the past few seasons, Eschenbach has led the Philadelphia Orchestra in its first-ever Mahler cycle. Tuesday night's performance of this most deceptive and quirky of symphonies was further proof that things are going very well indeed for Eschenbach, Philly, and Mahler.

The opening movement-abundant with sleigh bells-had a sense of urgency, as if it were proclaiming Santa's arrival. Eschenbach gave the music roundness and a bounce, but didn't always leave enough time for the musicians to breathe. If speed threatened to diminish some of the effect, however, there was a lot of nice detail in the cellos to enjoy.

The pacing was more successful in the ethereal third movement. Here, Mahler's delicate melodies were able to unfold deliberately, glowingly. The harp was highlighted in a way that brought to mind the equally exquisite Fifth Symphony Adagietto. Eschenbach reined in the violins from indulging in unbridled glissando and balanced out the texture between the melody line and the unusually up-front harmonies.

The fourth movement soprano was Marisol Montalvo, a singer best known for her interpretation of Lulu, and an unlikely choice for the role. First off, she was hard to hear and-at least in her approach to the song-her voice lacked coloristic variety. In her attempt to sound childlike, Montalvo sang with excited gasps over the shrill flurry of winds and strings. The result, however, was a performance that sounded less like a boy soprano (Mahler's original choice) and more like sprechstimme.

Mahler was a great influence on Alban Berg, whose Violin Concerto was the first piece on the program. The Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos was the soloist.

Berg-best known today for his operas Wozzeck and Lulu-was part of the Second Viennese School, the group of atonal composers whose other principal members were Schoenberg and Webern. Yet Berg continues to exert a wider appeal on audiences than his dodecaphonic contemporaries, in part because he found a way to marry 12-tone and classical techniques and wrote music that is both radically modern and oddly familiar. The two-movement Violin Concerto is a prime example-here, the lyricism and balance of the melodies and the dramatic tension between soloist and orchestra (as thrilling as anything in Mendelssohn or Tchaikovsky) can make the listener forget he's hearing an atonal work.

Kavakos' playing was very fluid and connected in the first movement amid the halting orchestral accompaniment. Some more warmth was in order, even if detachment was the effect Kavakos was going for. He was sometimes too slight, allowing the horns to swallow him up. Eschenbach, likewise, took a cool approach that enabled a multi-layered sound to develop. At moments of tension, Kavakos slid off into airy oblivion. And more often than not, the orchestra followed Kavakos's lead like a good dance partner.

Kavakos' technical virtuosity was increasingly matched with expressive warmth in the second movement, shown in his playing of descending arpeggios while the orchestra played in a clipped way. A physically dynamic and coolly calculating performer, Kavakos was hard to read. His bipolar performance did get at something in the score: a battle between the formalistic tendencies of atonalism and the pure expressive content of absolute music.