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A Mahler Third that cohered with vitality, refinement, poise

Friday, October 08, 2004
Donald Rosenberg
Plain Dealer Music Critic

Mahler's symphonies are sprawling organisms that touch on myriad aspects of human and spiritual existence. Nowhere in the composer's canon is this more true than in the Symphony No. 3, his longest piece in the genre and among the most affecting works Mahler created.

The Cleveland Orchestra and music director Franz Welser-MÖst drew the audience deeply into the Third Symphony on Thursday at Severance Hall. Here was an orchestra of almost incomparable poise, refinement and vitality sinking its collective heart and soul into Mahler's magnificent musings on nature, life and love.

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The level of playing, despite untidy moments here and there, was more than equal to the musical requirements in this obsessively detailed score. With the orchestra pushed forward, partly on a stage apron, to accommodate the choristers needed for the fifth movement, we could hear the musicians with utmost clarity and presence.

Welser-MÖst, who was so unconvincing in Mahler's Seventh Symphony with his ensemble, is far more comfortable in the varied activity of the Third. He didn't bring all of the opening movement's mysterious and exhilarating aspects together with complete authority. He pushed the exciting episodes to frantic ends, and he neutralized the ebb and flow of phrases.

But he made more contact with the score, and with his musicians, than he frequently does. The first movement was particularly fine where Mahler embraces intimacy, as well as in those spots where he assigns brooding material to the solo trombone. Douglas Wright, the orchestra's new principal trombonist, played these passages with bold assurance and controlled lyricism.

There could have been more charm in the bucolic landscapes of the second movement, while the cuckoos in the third movement sounded their calls delightfully and the offstage posthorn (played by Michael Sachs) was magical.

Welser-MÖst is often sensitively in his element when voices are onstage, as is the case in the fourth and fifth movements of the Mahler Third. He provided a calm collaboration for mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, whose patrician intensity suited the world-weary text beautifully, and the women of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and the Cleveland Orchestra Children's Chorus did their angelic thing with bright appeal.

And who couldn't be moved by the final movement, in which Mahler is the most eloquent orator imaginable on the subject of love? Welser-MÖst's pacing was both patient and urgent, with ample space for the orchestra to define Mahler's benevolent and sublime phrases in all their glory.

The symphony, which is repeated at 8 p.m. today and Saturday without intermission, was preceded Thursday by a short ceremony during which Alex Machaskee, president and publisher of The Plain Dealer, received the ninth annual Cleveland Orchestra Distinguished Service Award.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

drosenberg@plaind.com, 216-999-4269


© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
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© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
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