The Vienna Philharmonic concluded its annual three-concert stand at Carnegie Hall on the most familiar footing: a sold-out performance of Mahler’s Symphony no. 9 in D major. The queue for returns outside the box office stretched toward Sixth Avenue, and those lucky enough to score a last-minute ticket heard a performance thrilling in its immediacy, if not always scrupulous in its attention to detail. Much is made of the direct connection between Mahler and this orchestra and the traditions that are handed down from player to player, stretching back to the composer’s own time. Invoking such a maxim verges on cliché at this point, but after experiencing an interpretation like this, there is no denying its basis in truth.
On the podium, Franz Welser-Mӧst underlined the jarring contrasts of the first movement, building elongated lyrical phrases toward towering climaxes that still managed to resolve with a sense of serenity. Occasionally, the crashing cymbals, stately brass and forceful thwacking of the timpani obscured the more delicate phrasing in the string and woodwind, but taken in total, Welser-Mӧst cultivated an atmosphere of admirable balance between elegance and brawn. And even amid the roiling tension, there were lovely little moments to cherish: an extended flute solo emerged with graceful ease, and the harps that close the movement had an ethereal lilt.
After hearing these musicians interpret the work of another legendary Viennese composer – Bruckner, in many ways Mahler’s polar opposite – with a sense of awestruck majesty in a previous concert, it was exciting to note the difference in style apparent in the Lӓndler and Rondo-Burleske. This was worldly, sardonic and at times downright vulgar music-making. If you take the programmatic view that the Ninth is Mahler’s long farewell to the world, these movements could seem here like an attempt to wring every last juicy morsel out of life before shuffling off the mortal coil. Welser-Mӧst plunged headfirst into both sections, with textures in the second violins, cellos and double-basses you could cut with a knife, and woodwind solos that could be described as possessed. The occasionally folksy, defiantly unblended approach this orchestra takes to Mahler’s sound world was on its best display here.
The hurtling energy of the inner movements established the perfect environment for a profound Adagio. Welser-Mӧst built melodies from whispers to full-throated exultations with remarkable ease, as if turning up or down the volume on a stereo, but with more thought and care than such a facile description might convey. He took the view that this final statement was more a journey toward peace than a rage against the dying of the light, and those looking for more explosiveness might have been disappointed in the string sections that sounded more Romantically perfumed than full of vigor. To me, it felt like a grasp at hope even as the inevitable grew closer and closer – a final attempt to find beauty in the world. And it made the eventual fade to nothingness all the more devastating.
