Minnesota Orchestra & Osmo Vänskä: Mahler: Symphony No. 9
BIS Records

Is there a greater symphony composer than Gustav Mahler? Certainly a compelling argument can be made on his behalf when each of the nine symphonies (ten, if the Deryck Cooke-completed tenth is included) presents a complete, transformative, and wholly individualized sound world, from the radiant fourth and pastoral seventh to the mortality-grappling ninth. No Mahler symphony is more monumental than the latter, which, in its transcendent outer movements seemingly confronts death head-on. Such concerns came naturally to a composer whose five-year-old daughter, Maria, had died a few years before its writing and who might have felt his own passing was not far off. In fact, after completing the symphony in 1910, Mahler died a year later without hearing the eighty-minute work performed. (In liner notes, Jeremy Barham offers a corrective to the image of Mahler as an artist singulary fixated on death when he was engaged in multiple activities, excited for what the future held, and described himself to Bruno Walter as “thirstier for life than ever before.”)

Many an orchestra has recorded Mahler's symphonies in their entirety, including the Minnesota Orchestra and its conductor Osmo Vänskä. Since 2016, the company has released eight albums in its Mahler recording project. Testifying to the high calibre of the orchestra's playing, its recording of the fifth symphony received a 2018 Grammy nomination for 'Best Orchestral Performance.' It's not the only time the orchestra has undertaken a series, its recording of Sibelius's symphonies arriving earlier and its version of his first and fourth symphonies also bringing the ensemble a 2014 Grammy for 'Best Orchestral Performance.'

The audacity of the ninth begins with its structure, specifically Mahler's inverting of customary symphony form in framing two scherzos with slow movements. Alban Berg famously called the work's first movement “the most glorious thing Mahler has written,” and it's easy to be convinced when confronted by the vast emotional terrain traversed during its twenty-eight-minute journey (Berg also as memorably characterized the elegiac movement as “a foreboding of death”). The composer's organizing of elements into an organically flowing expression is riveting, and the daring with which Mahler modulates between different tonalities and moods is as captivating. Stirring episodes of tenderness alternate with turbulent passages intimating despair and an awareness of impending demise. The handling of the introduction is masterfully realized, with the orchestra hushed and the pace thoughtfully determined. It takes but two minutes, however, for anguish to emerge, leading to the first of many climaxes, and the movement oscillates thereafter between moments of profound rapture, peace, triumph, and despair. One could regard the movement as a near half-hour representation of the panorama of conflicting emotions that emerge in the moments before death.

After the first movement reaches its fragile resolution, the rustic second shifts the mood by introducing playful dance gestures and folk music allusions. The connection between the movements isn't entirely severed, however, as Mahler subtly weaves references to the opening part into the second's tapestry, and just as he does in other symphonies, the composer injects the charm and spiritually rejuvenating splendour of the countryside into the writing. The oft-frenzied third movement enters with authority, the music seething with sardonic fury and the orchestra in perpetual motion. All praise to the musicians for executing the contrapuntal passages with poise and the central trio with sensitivity and yearning. The work's critical culmination is its second adagio, its aura of leave-taking corroborated by the words of farewell Mahler scrawled on the symphony's draft manuscript. Following a haunting introduction by strings, the music swells rapturously as it progresses patiently towards its well-earned resolution. As the material grows ever softer and eventually expires, the impression created is of a dying person's serene acceptance of life as it slips away and heartfelt gratitude for the gifts it's bestowed.

June 2023