A spring tradition in the Queen City since 1873, the Cincinnati May Festival counts as the longest continually run choral festival in the western hemisphere. This year thus marked the sesquicentennial, and there was perhaps an obvious choice to suitably pull all the stops for such an occasion: Mahler’s vast and epic Eighth Symphony. There’s a distinguished Mahler tradition in Cincinnati, with the American premiere of the Third Symphony being given by the May Festival in 1914, and of the Fifth Symphony by the Cincinnati Symphony in 1905. Despite its proportions, the Eighth is no stranger here, with last weekend’s performance the tenth time it has appeared on a May Festival program.
There were purportedly 414 performers on stage Saturday night, a visual spectacle as much as an aural one. The May Festival Chorus doubled in size being joined by friends from the north in the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and further were three children’s choruses, eight vocal soloists and an augmented Cincinnati Symphony. Organ blasts heralded the might of the choruses from the onset of the opening Veni, Creator Spiritus – this is music that gets your blood flowing from bar one. This first part of the symphony was a nearly breathless affair, racing with vigor, though some lovely passages of arching lyricism from concertmaster Stefani Matsuo offered moments of introspection. Forces were rallied in gleaming brilliance for the hymn’s closing stanza, and conductor James Conlon (a late substitute for Juanjo Mena) marshaled the vast array of moving parts with natural aplomb.
Part 2, drawing on Goethe’s Faust, saw the singers seamlessly switch from Latin to German, though the opening orchestral prelude gave their vocal cords a well-earned rest. Matters were probingly contemplative, surging to passions and a deeply-felt brass chorale. The re-emergence of the chorus was sublime, and from here, the soloists played the narrative role of various Faustian figures. In the role of Pater Ecstaticus, José Antonio López offered a soaring delivery, and Christian Immler’s Pater Profundus delivered a dramatic monologue with the orchestra responding in lockstep to the vocal line.
Passages for the Angels saw the women of the chorus in isolation for a more intimate moment amidst the sprawling canvas, often in concert with the delicate voices of the children’s choruses, or in dialogue with the rich tone of Lauren Snouffer’s Mater Gloriosa. As Doctor Marianus, tenor Barry Banks’ flexible instrument had the right amount of strain and pain, pushing into his upper register. “Bei der Liebe” saw a rapturous Sarah Wegener, answered in due course by Kate Lindsey and Briana Hunter, with all subsequently joining together in a lovely trio. As a penitent (namely, Faust’s erstwhile lover, Gretchen), one was struck by Camilla Tilling’s vocal purity, fittingly echoed by the children’s choir. An ecstatically uplifting “Blicket auf” pointed towards the final “Alles Vergängliche” wherein the forces were brought down to barely a whisper before bursting into an unequivocally glorious and triumphant finale.
Though doing an encore after Mahler 8 might seem all but superfluous, it’s a tradition to close the May Festival with Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus. With the participation of all performers along with the sold-out audience on their feet singing along, it was a fittingly jubilant close to a festive evening.
