Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, Sunday, May 17 – The 9th Symphony is amazing. That is not the word I like to use for amazing salads or amazing traffic, but it means yes, this is amazing. Gustav Mahler’s symphonies are all amazing and each one is different. One wonderful aspect of the 9th Symphony – and the other Mahler works – is that every musician is so involved in a personal way. One can see and hear just what their parts are and how their playing melds with the others or breaks in upon what the other sections are doing. The SF Symphony played with heart and soul.
The audience filled the Hall even though our treasured Conductor Laureate had to skip the performance. He fell ill on the opening night, May 16. He had performed the 9th at Detroit just a week before, and he had led the 9th in Berlin before that, too. Maestro Blomstedt was San Francisco’s leader 1985-1995. All of his previous orchestras named him Conductor Laureate. That includes NDR Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Dresden, Bamberg, and the NHK Symphony. And then, there are the touring dates. He is an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic. At his age, 98, we will look forward to more seasons in San Francisco; he already has the date on SFS’s calendar.
The Cavalier who came to the rescue of the 9th, was David Robertson. He is a close friend of Maestro Blomstedt and sometimes shows up to rehearse an orchestra. He is also a top conductor who was Conductor of Sydney Symphony, St.Louis Symphony Music Director for 13 great years, Music Director of Orchestre National de Lyon: we were lucky that he was with Blomstedt and could step in. Maestro Robertson was also amazing, taking on Mahler’s 9th as though each note was in Robertson’s heart and on his skin. The Symphony No. 9 in D major was composed through 1908-09. Sadly, Mahler never heard it performed as he passed away May 18, 1911. The 9th’s first movement is Andante comodo. It is very long for a first – or any – movement. It begins with only cello, harp, and horn. It builds deeper with changes of orchestration and emotions. It presents gentle music and then switches to a difficult feeling that is more telling of frightened omens. Unwinding the first movement, will it express love or fear? The movement ends with fragments drifting away but not certain of what will happen.
The second movement has an unusual name but it is precise: In the tempo of a comfortable landler. The landler is a folk dance from Central Europe that is homey and happy. This dance music is followed by another dance that sounds more urban, trendy, and fancier. There are moments in the music where one could picture a farmer bumping into the fancy dancer. They do not enjoy being anywhere near each other. The rhythms bang into the dances, and the motion does not feel as though the situation will calm itself or tie up the fragments that we might feel.
As the third movement, Rondo burleske, begins one feels an intimate war of sound. At first the brass and strings hold on but do not keep their fight. It is like a bunch of gruesome monsters who only want to tear apart everything they can see. One might suddenly hear something recognizable as Classical music, but it gets twisted. The war begins to stop, but the destruction increases and ends with disasters.
The final movement, Adagio, might lead a listener to believe that the violence will work for peace. And yet, it seems to lack the desire for a rest from attacks. While that becomes the back ground which disappears, the music may become a prayer. Its sound is gentle, calling back toward the suggestions from the first movement. We are there, not in action, but we are there.