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Performances of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 (the “Symphony of a Thousand”) never quite add up. Perhaps the work is too technically unwieldy, or maybe its meaning is too obtuse. (After he finished the symphony, Mahler wrote his wife in 1909 that “it is all an allegory to convey something that, no matter what form it is given, can never be adequately expressed.”)  Whatever the reason, it is a work that demands attention. Mahler’s largest creation--and one of few that were well received in his lifetime--premiered in 1910. Nearly 90 years later, New York City played host to not one but two performances of this massive and rarely mounted symphony.

The first took place in May at Carnegie Hall. Pierre Boulez, a French modern-music maestro and arguably the leading interpreter of Mahler's 6th Symphony, conducted the Staatskapelle Berlin, the orchestra for the Berlin State Opera. The Staatskapelle is a solid pit band, but hardly a world-class symphonic orchestra, and not the first group of players you’d pick for Mahler. The singers, however, were first rate and the orchestra played with assurance, if little sparkle. The performance was most notable for its restraint.

It is not clear whether this restraint was due to Boulez’s minimalism, the relatively modest size of the forces assembled (the Carnegie concert involved barely 300 musicians; at the symphony's premiere in 1910 there were over a thousand) or simple fatigue (the Staatskapelle was performing all ten of Mahler's symphonies in under two weeks). Regardless, the result was an 8th that beguiled more than it overwhelmed.

The first of the symphony’s two movements has the orchestra and chorus blasting through a medieval Latin text, called “Veni, creator spiritus”, that begs a higher being to endow its wisdom to mankind. It’s normally some 25 minutes of music that makes Carmina Burana or Verdi’s Requiem seem tame. But under Boulez’s baton, the music moved fast and occasionally got furious, but it never seemed to crescendo. Instead of the immediate, visceral satisfaction the movement often delivers, it left me waiting, hoping to be blown away.

This sense of anticipation allowed me to be drawn deeper into the 2nd movement, which is taken from the final scene from Goethe’s "Faust". The normally brisk Boulez stretched out what is usually an hour-long passage. This choice left me marvelling at Mahler’s attention to detail, but that also taxed the singers. The vocal solo parts in Act II are real killers, and even two of the world’s biggest Wagnerians, Christine Brewer and Steven Gould, sometimes sounded strained.

Hard-core Mahler fans may have objected to Boulez’s cool interpretation, but there was a payoff. By the time the three sopranos introduced Gretchen, the woman wronged by Faust, the music's awe-inspiring quality emerged. Suddenly the strings shimmered, the Westminster Symphonic Choir and the American Boychoir sang with power and precision, the brass rang out from both the stage and the left balcony. Then the climax: Sylvia Schwartz, a soprano singing unseen from the highest rafters of the hall, called on Faust, Gretchen and all of humanity to “Come, rise up to higher spheres. If he is aware of you, he will follow.”

If the full work didn’t take on a sacred, transcendent quality, that moment did. Whatever you thought of what came before—it was worth the wait.

Usually one has to wait quite a while for a chance to hear the 8th live again. The last big performance of this symphony was five years ago at Carnegie Hall, with James Levine leading the Boston Symphony through an account that was (to these ears) big, loud, unfocused and marred by cancellations by soloists.

The last time it was performed by the New York Philharmonic—the orchestra Mahler himself led just after he wrote the 8th—was in 1976 (also at Carnegie Hall). This alone made the four performances at Avery Fisher Hall in June noteworthy. Yet they took on even more significance since they were also Lorin Maazel’s final concerts as music director of the NY Phil.

I worried that Maazel, a maximalist (in the best and worst sense of the word), would make this sprawling symphony into a vulgar mess. On the contrary, he was less aggressive in pushing tempi and emphasising certain sections of the orchestra than Boulez.

Also in contrast, Maazel let the first movement rip. Aided by over 350 musicians, he concentrated on the main theme of the symphony, placing an aural spotlight on it whenever it appeared in the score. Throughout the work, the Philharmonic’s brass section blared brightly and tightly. The three choirs (New York Choral Artists, the Dessoff Symphonic Choir and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus) sang with focus. And short but special attention must be paid to concertmaster Glenn Dicterow’s passionate violin solo.

If Boulez tried to paint Mahler’s 8th as a forward-looking, 20th-century work, Maazel conducted it as if it were the pastoral, 19th-century opera Mahler never wrote. He savoured its bigness, its romantic sweep, and was unashamed of its rough edges. Christine Brewer, on hand again, sounded even better a month later. Anthony Dean Griffey was inaudible when he had to compete with the full orchestra, but his tenor sounded lovely when accompanied by only a cello solo.  Nancy Gustafson brought an appropriately operatic demeanor and sound to the part of Gretchen.

Goethe’s text calls for angels soaring around mountain summits—images that  Maazel and his orchestra conjured with their playing. If the second movement never reached a moment of true lofty, quasi-religiousness (which Mahler wanted and that Boulez achieved, albeit fleetingly), Maazel’s rendering was musically true: big, noisy and full of life. And to be fair, Avery Fisher Hall is a less theatrical space than Carnegie. During the big climax, Janine DeBique’s Mater Gloriosa simply sang from the left balcony instead of five stories above the stage, robbing the moment of the effect of having everyone look to the heavens.

During Maazel’s seven-season tenure as music director, I’ve often felt that the maestro asserted himself too much into the music. (At his inaugural concert back in 2003, the programme should have read “Maazel’s 9th, after Beethoven”.)  With this final concert, Mahler’s 8th was heard properly and stirringly as Mahler’s.

Despite these two performances, which were moving in very different ways, I’m still not sure what exactly "the Symphony of a Thousand" has to say. Dedicated to Mahler's wife, Alma, the work could be some sort of apology, or a granting of forgiveness. But beyond that, all it says for sure is that we should be humble before our creator—a simple thought expressed in a very un-simple way for almost 90 minutes. Given the way Mahler expresses much more and with greater sophistication in his other later symphonies, I keep hoping that I will one day experience a revelatory live performance. (This is a work that doesn’t really translate in recordings. You have to feel the air rushing out of over 200 voices and more than 40 horns.) This has yet to happen.

 

When asked about Mahler's No. 8, Stravinsky is said to have replied “was so much machinery really needed just to prove that two and two equals four?” My sense is that Mahler needed so much machinery because he in fact was trying to blow apart such logic. With his two very unequal, unwieldy movements, and with texts in two different languages, he seemed to be saying that two plus five equals something much greater than eight. With so much on stage, the excitement of this symphony is that each performance is so unpredictable, even explosive. The fact that it doesn't add up may be the point.

 

 

Picture credit: Mahler's Symphony No. 8, photographed by SanFranAnnie; Rodin's sculpture of Mahler, photographed by Ben Sutherland (both via Flickr)

(James C. Taylor is the host of "Theatre Talk", a radio programme on KCRW. He writes about theatre and opera for the Los Angeles Times and Opera Magazine. His last piece for More Intelligent Life was about why he was underwhelmed by the presidential inauguration.)