Review: Mahler’s Third Symphony a grand finish to VSO's season

The VSO tackled Mahler for its season finale. VSO

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The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra tries to end each season with something grand and extravagant. This year, music director conductor Otto Tausk chose Mahler’s Third Symphony, the longest and arguably grandest work in the standard symphonic repertoire.

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Some of the extravagant symphonies of the Viennese master have become well known to Vancouver audiences, but the Third, finished in 1896, is performed only infrequently. That’s no surprise when you consider all the extra brass and wind players, a mezzo soprano soloist — in this instance, Rihab Chaieb — a women’s chorus, AND a children’s ensemble. The work is in six movements and lasts between 1½-2 hours. Ironically, the mammoth piece is often about quiet, subtle effects, and although it contains no end of ideas, they all fit together with formal brilliance.

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Mahler’s score is exceptionally rich in detail; a wealth of indications, special techniques, and effects are hardwired into the score. Even more important is how the conductor creates a sustained and consistent trajectory. Tausk’s winning strategy was to conceive of the materials as three big gulps: the extended first movement, a central pair of what could be considered scherzos, and a three-stage finale.

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The first movement, about as long as a complete early Beethoven symphony, sets up much of the material for the later movements. Mahler’s famous dictum — “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything” — here overflows with ideas and contradictions. Tausk’s feel for the psychological drama of the opening was spot on, although he did play up Mahler’s coy vulgarities set in opposition to a profoundly serious musical discussion.

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The second movement is more about lyrical relief. Tausk emphasized the Schubertian lyricism, keeping the occasional grotesquerie firmly in the background. This approach extended to the third movement, with its lovely offstage posthorn solo. Its climax is a tsunami of sound which crashes into a fierce coda. Here, Tausk kept his cards close to his vest; this exceptional moment was decidedly not the high point of the symphonic excursion, rather a promise of more and better to come.

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The so-called Midnight Song that follows, a setting of some cryptic lines by Nietzsche, was rightly delivered as chamber music: beautiful interplay between the mezzo and carefully curated instruments. At its enigmatic conclusion Task launched directly into the charming interlude for women’s voices, kids choir, and bells, a telling bit of staging beautifully considered and executed. Then, with just a moment to shift tone and mood, it was on to the last movement, a terminal Adagio that matches the weight if not quite the length of the opening. And it was here that Tausk’s clear-headed strategy became completely obvious: a long slow build from tentative, heart-rending beauty into expansive glory.

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It’s worth noting that Tausk ended last season with another symphonic behemoth, Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. Strauss filled his score with programmatic tags that give the listener specific ideas about exactly what is happening in every section of his extended score. Mahler originally gave each of the movements of this Third Symphony programmatic clues, then wisely jettisoned the idea, allowing listeners to find their own way through the symphony’s grand progress. Thus, we are invited to hear Mahler’s meditation on life and love not as a sermon, but as an intimate conversation with a worldly, wise friend.

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