In his book-length essay "Why Mahler?" author Norman Lebrecht calls the composer's Fifth Symphony "a litmus test for many weaknesses." Saturday night's performance by the Anchorage Symphony revealed many shortcomings, but that didn't deter the audience from delivering jubilant applause and cheers when the 75-or-so-minute-long symphony concluded.
The ASO presented the work in 1999, as the final concert led by George Hanson before he left the job of conductor. I was interested to hear how the symphony might have evolved in the past 16 years and how current conductor Randall Craig Fleischer might handle it, and Saturday's performance presented a good opportunity.
The strings have clearly improved through the years, particularly the violins. The pitch problems that sometimes made one squint are mostly gone. But it seemed to me the brass section and horns were better in 1999. The first movement especially depends on the brass to sustain a mood of doom and glory; but they sounded tenuous. The percussion was ably handled, especially the special effects like clacking the rim of the bass drum with sticks.
For much of the time, the difficult and gnarly score drifted toward tedium (an issue that has led some capable conductors to make cuts). By the third movement -- the longest and most problematic of the five movements in what is, in terms of the number of measures, Mahler's longest work -- much of the steam seemed to have left the players. The Adagietto felt mechanical rather than ephemeral.
Fleischer cued the start of the finale right on the heels of the Adagietto, which is true to tradition and the score, and a good idea on Saturday night when people were applauding after every movement. The counterpoint of the finale was blurred, the winds disappearing in the welter of notes, something of an issue all night long. The evolution of various musical ideas into solid and prominent statements did not gel.
There are many interpretations of this multi-faceted piece, from stoic and conversational to frantic and furious, but the best readings -- and there are several of them -- have a gut-punching emotional cohesion that exceeds the sum of its parts. I waited in vain for something like that to materialize. It may be Fleischer was trying to give form to a vision that the orchestra was not able to make materialize.
What it could make happen was a wall of sound in the finale. The ending enjoyed a taut energy crowned by strong and sure playing from the brass at the concluding chorale. It was this, I think, that had the crowd on their feet.
The new acoustic shell in Atwood Hall was a boon. It looked to me like players may have been packed more tightly in the center than in previous concerts, making for a big sonic effect. At the climax of the second movement, the best part of the program, I felt the floor vibrating under my balcony seat in a way I don't think I've experienced before. Yet the fading bass drum strokes that close the first movement, inaudible in many recordings, were clear despite being pin-drop quiet.
The evening opened with Dane Johansen as the soloist in the Haydn Cello Concerto in C. He was most persuasive in the lovely slow movement and in his execution of an effect Haydn uses several times in this piece, swelling a long note that emerges from under the ensemble to start a dominant phrase for the solo instrument.
The author of the cadenza in the first movement (likely not Haydn) was unidentified in the program; there are several out there and the soloist is free to improvise his own. Whatever the source, there was a point near the end where it could have easily morphed into "Alaska's Flag." But, whether as a matter of taste or missed opportunity, that did not happen.