Concert review | Seattle Symphony does justice to Mahler

Concert review |

Mahler is at once genius and mountebank, and his Fifth Symphony partakes of both those characters. This is music that veers wildly between soul-searing eloquence and blithe banality, often in the same breath.

The banality, no accident, is indissolubly linked with the eloquence, in the composer's conception of symphony as a medium that should, like the world, contain everything. And these qualities can be put in fruitful balance by a performance that does justice to both, which this one by Gerard Schwarz's Seattle Symphony certainly did.

Especially in the funereal first movement, and in the slower, processional passages of the second, there was something about Mahler's music and the way Schwarz shaped it that sounded like 100 people all being lonely together. It was a magical effect, and it brought a lump to at least this listener's throat.

The conductor benefited from having at his disposal (to a large degree through his own orchestra-building efforts) an ensemble peculiarly well-equipped to meet Mahler's exorbitant demands. The brass group is as fine as any in the world, and did itself proud. David Gordon launched the symphony on its way with a focused and rhythmically propulsive trumpet solo. Ko-ichiro Yamamoto's trombone section and Christopher Olka's tuba rang out firmly, and the horns were their usual polished and powerful selves. There was fine work too from woodwinds, percussion, timpanist Michael Crusoe, and strings, the violins soaring aloft in ecstatic dialogue with harpist Valerie Muzzolini in the famous Adagietto fourth movement.

The only aspect of the interpretation that might be called controversial was Schwarz's somewhat leisured pacing of the symphony's central scherzo. Here, his bringing principal horn John Cerminaro up to the front of the platform was perhaps a miscalculation. The score denotes the part as obbligato, not solo, and the concertolike setup was a bit distracting. Still, Cerminaro played his music as beautifully as you will ever hear it played. He is a poet rather than a showman, and thus blended well into a view of the movement less extrovert than usual, and thus less drastic in its reshaping of the work's expressive trajectory.

Before intermission, yet another talented young violinist made her local bow. Isabelle Faust played Mendelssohn's peachy E-minor Violin Concerto with opulent tone and warm expression, and showed herself willing to play really softly. This was a subtle reading, but one with ample brilliance at the appropriate moments.

Bernard Jacobson: bernardijacobson@comcast.net