Symphony masters Mahler’s Eighth
Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
Mahler’s Eighth Symphony has been a source of difficulty for Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for years now, the one work in the composer’s canon that seemed determined to elude their grasp. As one work after another emerged in glory from the orchestra’s long-term recording project, this one drew postponements and not-quite-ready concert performances.
Well, that’s all over now.
On Wednesday night in Davies Symphony Hall, with the microphones on and the tape rolling, Thomas led a huge army of instrumentalists, vocal soloists and choristers both young and old - the Eighth’s sobriquet “Symphony of a Thousand” is an exaggeration, but not by much - in a breathtakingly great performance of this fiendishly difficult score.
It was a high point of this concert season, and the most assured and exciting live Mahler the orchestra has offered in years. If even some of the grandeur, clarity and specificity of Wednesday’s concert can be captured on disc, this promises to be a triumphant capstone to the entire cycle.
A success this comprehensive is impossible without contributions from all concerned. The orchestra produced its most robust and evocative playing in months, and the Symphony Chorus - attaining new heights under the leadership of Ragnar Bohlin - sang with unparalleled vigor. This performance also boasts the first truly flawless lineup of vocal soloists the Eighth has yet had in San Francisco.
But the most definitive credit for this coup goes to Thomas, who presided over his forces with a combination of firm mastery and responsive sensitivity. More than in any recent performance, Thomas seemed to have taken the full 90-minute measure of this piece and plotted it out with unerring care.
And if ever a piece needed wrangling, it is Mahler’s Eighth, a behemoth that constantly threatens to slip its bonds. Each of the two panels in this diptych presents its own set of challenges, and fitting them together coherently is the third piece of the puzzle.
The opening movement, a setting of the medieval Latin hymn “Veni, creator spiritus,” is a maximally dense exercise in virtuoso counterpoint, with many strands operating at once in close proximity. That is followed by a long, varied and theatrical setting of the final scene from Goethe’s “Faust.”
The problems for a conductor are obvious. They involve keeping the first movement from collapsing into itself like some musical black hole, and connecting the potentially episodic structure of the second movement.
That Thomas was more than equal to the challenge was clear from the symphony’s opening minutes. The first measures, an explosive fireball of sound that imparts formative energy to everything that comes afterward, were thrilling, but that wasn’t the hard part.
Rather, it was the clarity and vividness of the ensuing 30 minutes that stood out. With the orchestra, and especially the first and second violins, spread out across vast distances on the Davies stage, Mahler’s intricate counterpart - like Bach on steroids - emerged with unprecedented transparency.
You could hear the almost physical impact of Mahler’s writing in the most close-knit passages. But through it all there was also a vein of seductive lyricism that rarely makes it past those big sonorities.
After disentangling the sonic snarls of the first movement, Thomas went on to stitch together the potentially disparate strands of the second. Even for devotees of Goethe’s fragrant eschatology, this succession of one vocal solo and choral section after another can often seem to meander; but Thomas kept the rhythmic and dramatic momentum running steadily throughout the movement.
Perhaps most impressively, Thomas made his audience hear the coiled power of the first movement as the source of that energy. Even with a longish gap between the two movements, there was a link between them - of sensibility, of emotional impact, of kinetic charge - that I’ve never heard expressed so palpably.
None of that would have been possible without the efforts of the Symphony Chorus, whose singing - mighty and volcanic in the first movement, celestially radiant in the second - was a constant source of wonder. The Pacific Boychoir, led by Kevin Fox, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, led by Susan McMane, made luminous contributions as well.
And the lineup of vocal soloists was nothing short of magnificent. Sopranos Erin Wall and Elza van den Heever led the contingent with bright, piercing tones and uncannily precise intonation.
Mezzo-sopranos Katarina Karnéus and Yvonne Naef - their singing earthily provocative and darkly elegant, respectively - handled the lower reaches. The male contingent, all of them superb, included tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, baritone Quinn Kelsey and bass James Morris. And near the end, soprano Laura Claycomb appeared in the balcony to sing the few lines of the Mater Gloriosa with seraphic intensity.
Mahler’s Eighth is a weighty and often exhausting undertaking, but a performance this fine is an exhilarating thing. When it was over, I, for one, was ready for an encore.
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