Mahler was a man of great extremes. In addition to the monumental and epic symphonies on which most of his reputation lies, he mastered the miniature with volumes of intricately crafted Lieder. The Cleveland Orchestra’s all-Mahler program highlighted these contrasts in sharp relief, prefacing the vast canvas of the kaleidoscopic Seventh Symphony with an equally varied selection of songs.
Baritone Sir Simon Keenlyside was without question a choice interpreter, giving these songs a deeply expressive reading, speaking directly to the audience with penetrating communication. A carefully curated collection of six offered a coherent arc: entries from Lieder und Gesänge bookended four of the Wunderhorn settings. The limpid orchestration of Frühlingsmorgen conveyed blissful innocence, worlds apart from the brassy call to arms of Revelge, a quantity which also epitomized Mahlerian irony.
For those accustomed to Urlicht as sung by an alto in its appropriation by the Second Symphony, Keenlyside’s baritone took it into a darker realm, answered by the solemnity of the brass chorale. Even amidst the coquettishness of Rheinlegendchen, Keenlyside drew a wide expressive range, and Hans und Grete – Maher’s earliest published song – was filled with yearning, a theme that would wander through much of the composer’s output in the years to come.
Franz Welser-Möst and Mahler is a dependably fruitful pairing, even when short of revelatory. Pierre Boulez’s landmark recording of the Seventh Symphony with this orchestra nearly three decades ago offered an uncompromisingly modernist take; Welser-Möst’s conception was decidedly more middle of the road. Beginning hesitantly and shrouded in mystery, a theme in the tenor horn then stridently resounded, marked by the sharp snap of the dotted rhythms. Midway through the expansive opening movement, a pastoral idyll had wondrous calming effect to the surrounding chaos and frenzy; one even sensed echoes of the cuckoo from Ablösung im Sommer heard in the first half. The coda was a blistering and relentless affair.
A lambent horn call (Nathaniel Silberschlag) opened the first of the movements bearing the Nachtmusik moniker, soon in discourse and discord with the winds. Folksy charm pervaded thereafter, but tempered by the persistent, unsettling switches from major to minor, as if a flickering candlelight only partially illuminating the night. Striking orchestral effect was achieved in an idiosyncratic instrumentation that included cowbells, given with sincerity and not banality.
The latter Nachtmusik was rather more languid, with some especially fine playing from concertmaster David Radzynski. The addition of mandolin and guitar painted a rarefied scene, and Welser-Möst had a tendency to bring the dynamics down to a whisper at its inflection points, almost Schubertian in understatement. Between the two was the Scherzo, passing by in eerie phantasmagoria (fitting for Friday the 13th), though here was a point where the orchestral playing felt somewhat less inspired.
The thunderous timpani that opened the finale was in stark contrast to the night. If the first movement was saturated in Tristan-infused harmonies, here that gave way, guns ablaze, to the brassy brilliance of Meistersinger. This wasn’t all bombast, however, with conductor offering substantial dynamic variation. Moreover, the conundrum of the Seventh lies in it contravening the archetypal journey from darkness to light, and instead creating a realm in which the two exist side by side. This was a duality keenly explored in the present performance, though it was the ensemble’s technical precision that perhaps made the strongest impression in the Rondo-Finale, bringing the long journey to a close with singular unity.
