Mahler, Ravel and Lieberson: Kelley O'Connor, mezzo soprano, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Haitink (conductor) Symphony Center, Chicago 3.5.2008 (JLZ).

Ravel: Menuet Antique
Lieberson: Neruda Songs
Mahler: Symphony no. 1


Among the finest performances of the season, the latest series of concerts led by Bernard Haitink, principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was as memorable as his appearances with the ensemble during the last two seasons. At the core of this  program is Mahler’s First Symphony, and as familiar as the work is to Chicago audiences, Haitink brought out dimensions of it  that are not always apparent with other conductors. From the start, with the atmospheric pitches that bear the unique marking “Wie ein Naturlaut” (“like a sound in nature”) had an intensity that contributed to the tension in the extended introduction to the first movement. Haitink differentiates himself from other conductors because of his ability to bring a timbral vitality to passages with sustained sounds, like the opening of this symphony. Thus, when more animated motives appear, the differences are immediately audible, and lead to the opening theme of the first movement. Such sensitivity to the quality of the sound is important in Mahler’s music, which characteristically uses various kinds of sonic imagery in conjunction with other musical elements.   The off-stage trumpets in this very passage are another aspect of the palette of sounds that Mahler habitually, and which Haitink treated well. With the trumpet sounds emerging in der Ferne, as it were, Mahler allowed for a depth of sound that Haitink brought out nicely, at the clarinet’s entrance on stage. This set the tonefor a memorable performance.

Haitink likewise treated the score with respect by following the tempo markings as written, which allowed the architecture of the work's architecture to emerge  as Mahler created it. Such respect matches and elaborates Haitink’s interpretation, which may be characterized by his unstinting demands for dynamic, full sounds, even at lower dynamic levels. He was able to control the movement without dominating it, and this allowed the climactic points to emerge clearly, within the first mmovement's formal structure : fFiguration was clear and clean; entrances, clean; and rhythmic interplay precise. The coda of the first movement, with its stretto effect in the low brass requires the kind of precision that the Chicago Symphony can certainly deliver, and Haitink enabled the performers to make the passage work so well that it elicited applause from some parts of the audience.

With the second movement - the Scherzo that takes its cue from Mahler’s early song “Hans und Grethe” - Haitink conveyed the sense of a ländler from the start.  The second movement of the First Symphony stands out among  Mahler’s scores for the paucity of tempo markings. Unlike the more detailed markings in the other movements, the implicit vagueness can be treated as slavishly bound to the tempo at the beginning of the movement, or else left to the discretion of the conductor. Haitink allowed the character of the music to guide his tempi and this, in turn, contributed to the shape he gave to the themes. The movement's continuing dance-like quality emerged readily, and Haitink’s a piacere treatment of the middle section helped to bring out the structure of the Scherzo further with the reprise of the Landler.

A similar sense of architecture was apparent with the third movement, in which Haitink brought out the tripartite structure of the piece. Opting for the “Brüder Martin” tune that opens the movement to be played by the whole bass section, rather than by a single player, Haitink arrived at a solid sound for this sometimes treacherous passage. Mahler took his cue for this movement from Max von Schwind’s woodcut of The Huntsman’s Funeral, a sardonic depiction of the animals once pursued as game taking the hunter to his final rest, and a sense of irony must emerge in the music. Haitink brought this out extremely clearly and without caricature. The passage that Mahler described as 'in the style of music heard at a Bohemian wedding' was colored by following the instructions in the score to have the woodwind bells raised in the air to reveal a coarser sound. Yet the middle section, which begins with a figure in the harp and proceeds to the quotation from the last song in Mahler’s song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, stands in contrast to the outer sections. It also calls yo mind , the music that accompanies the figure of the innocent, resting knight in the original first part of his secular cantata Das klagende Lied: those familiar with these Mahler works may find this section  evocative for the multiple meanings that can emerge from it. In rendering it here, the Chicago Symphony was poignant without lapsing into sentimentality, and Haitink was keen to shape the sound throughout.

Yet it is the Finale that poses the most challenges, since the cyclic nature of the structure involves a return of ideas from all three of the preceding movements. The pacing that Haitink used in presenting this movement allowed it to serve as a meta-recapitulation, and established a context for the famous, triumphant brass theme with which the work concludes. Mahler’s score builds gradually to the conclusion, and Haitink delivered a solid, paced increase of sound, so that the ending was definitive. This was no hollow victory that less demanding conductors allow to occur but  in Haitink’s hand it was a deliberate progression that led to an unquestionably strong conclusion. This was a masterful reading of Mahler’s First Symphony which will remain long in memory for the special synergy between Bernard Hiatink and the Chicago Symphony.

The first half of the program was important for other reasons. The rarely performed  Menuet antique by Maurice Ravel opened it. In this 1930 orchestration of a piano piece Ravel had composed in 1895, the score reflects the composer’s sense of timbre and, at the same time, hints at a dissonant idiom that brings to mind Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. Haitink gave this work the same attention to detail that he would later bring to the Mahler and also to the Neruda Songs (2005) by Peter Lieberson, which followed.

Composed for his late wife Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs is a collection of five orchestral songsusing  poems by the contemporary Peruvian poet Pablo Neruda. The work is intense in conveying a sense of passionate love in both the intonation of the text and the musical accompaniment that supports it. This was the first performance of the work beyond the recording  made with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson herself, and so  naturally would invite comparisons. The composer’s presence on stage for bows connoted his involvement with the performance, which the audience applauded enthusiastically.

Kelley O’Connor brought her own style to the Neruda Songs, and if her voice was sometimes masked by the orchestral forces, the solo passages revealed her sensitivity to the phrasing of both  music  and texts. The Spanish verse flowed easily both in Lieberson’s setting and O’Connor’s rendering of these intense love songs. While it is difficult to separate the individual pieces of this five-sonnet cycle, the third and central sonnet, conveyed the poignancy that is found in the whole. Repeated phrases, an element that occurs at various points in the cycle, contribute to Lieberson’s settings of Neruda’s texts and the reiterated “amor” at the ending of the fifth and final setting resembles the repeated “ewig” at the conclusion of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Haitink brought well-thought out shape to this new work, an effort that is as laudable as his magisterial approach to Mahler’s First Symphony. The meeting of old and new, familiar and less so, contributed a sense of freshness to this program. This was a memorable concert that demonstrated once more the continuing strength of the special relationship between Haitink and the Chicago Symphony, especially in Mahler’s First Symphony.

James L. Zychowicz


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