(++++) SPIRITUAL JOURNEYS

Mahler: Symphony No. 5. Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR conducted by Gary Bertini. SWR Music. $20.99.

Christopher Tyler Nickel: Mass; Te Deum. Catherine Redding, soprano; Vancouver Chamber Choir and Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Clyde Mitchell. AVIE. $19.99.

     There is always a sacred dimension to Mahler’s music, even when it is not made as explicit as in Symphonies Nos. 2 and 8. The spirituality can even crop up in unexpected works, such as Symphony No. 5, when a conductor appears as attuned as Gary Bertini was to the underlying emotionalism and sense of connection not only with the work’s deeply felt internal emotions but also with something beyond the personal. The new SWR Music release of Bertini conducting Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR offers an older performance than ones with which those who know Bertini’s Mahler are likely to be familiar: this reading dates to 1981. Bertini (1927-2005) continued to explore Mahler in later decades and with other orchestras, but this Mahler Fifth comes across as evidencing an unusually personal relationship between composer and interpreter, with a strong sense of the transcendent. The first movement features a very clear trumpet opening and deliberate pacing, with Bertini keeping the rhythm very consistent: this is indeed Wie ein Kondukt, as Mahler instructed. There is a strong contrast with the faster section about five minutes from the start, and unusual clarity throughout in the balancing of strings with brass. The delicacy of the timpani is notably contrasted with the lyricism of the strings 10 minutes along, and there is an ongoing strong sense of yearning – this is part of the spiritual dimension here – with a delicate ending. Then the second movement is decidedly stürmisch at the beginning and is paced quickly. Again there is an emphasis on lyricism when the opportunity presents itself, and a great sense of warmth throughout. The movement tends to be a bit episodic, with a stop-and-go quality, but its forward motion is propelled as appropriate, and Bertini dwells on the warm, even sweet elements. Percussion is handled aptly for emphasis but not overdone; the same is true for the brass exclamations. This reading is not as intense or dramatic as some performances, with the result that the final portion has less of a triumphal feeling, but it does offer a sense of uplift before the quiet ending simply dissipates.

     The bright horn proclamation at the opening of the third movement introduces nice rhythmic motion, the pacing perhaps a trifle fast – and again, Bertini offers unusually sensitive balancing of strings and brass. Smooth flow dominates here: the movement is not really kräftig but on the delicate side. Still, there is plenty of heft in the brass when that is called for after about five minutes. The chamber-music delicacy of the scoring comes through especially well here, with fine soloists and impressively soft ensemble playing. The Adagietto is almost unbearably sweet at the start, as Romantic with a capital R as it can be. There is a sense that Bertini stretches out the themes as if reluctant to let them go. The performance, although on the slow side, is not exceptionally so in clock time, but it has an expansive, almost timeless feeling about it. Here Bertini dwells on every possible nuance of warmth, and once more a spiritual element comes to the fore: again and again the music seems about to evaporate, but the melody sustains and spins out further to the end. Then the mood is lightened immediately with the jaunty opening of the finale as the non-string sections return. Bertini moves this movement at a fairly quick pace, producing a strong contrast to the Adagietto. Indeed, the finale percolates along brightly, almost merrily, with a lightness not usually associated with Mahler. There is even something approaching jubilation after about six minutes – and the significantly lightened mood continues throughout, a series of bursts of brightness culminating in a chorale that really does sound like a capstone for the whole symphonic edifice. The sense of a symphony moving “from darkness to light” is pervasive in this performance, and if that is scarcely an unusual path for a symphonic work to take, Bertini manages to imbue Mahler’s Fifth with a sense that both the dark elements and the light ones have resonance beyond the purely personal and individualistic.

     Unsurprisingly, the spiritual elements are more explicit and overt on an AVIE recording of the recently composed Mass and Te Deum by Christopher Tyler Nickel (born 1978). What is unexpected is the comparative darkness of Nickel’s treatment of traditional Latin texts that contain, by their very nature, a healthy dose of spiritual affirmation and uplift. Nickel does not see or set the texts conventionally, for all that he mostly employs expressive consonance in these works (with a smattering of polytonality and, inevitably, a certain degree of dissonance that is never pervasive). The Mass (2023) has a single movement, the Gloria, marked “Brightly,” and it could scarcely be set on any other basis while staying true to the words – but of the seven movements in all, the last four are insistent upon a seriousness that veers again and again toward the dour, although it usually stops just in time and comes across as thoughtful and a touch uncertain. “Adagio,” “Solemn,” again “Solemn” and “Lento” are the designations of these sections, with the very slow setting of the concluding Agnus Dei not so much undermining the promise of peace as turning the phrase dona nobis pacem into a plea rather than an expectation. This is a distinctive and unusual way to set the words of a Mass, and there is a cinematic quality about the work’s expressiveness – no surprise, given Nickel’s forays into film music. The very fine singing of the Vancouver Chamber Choir and sensitive playing of the Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra under Clyde Mitchell make this Mass more a matter of quest and questioning than of proclamatory certainty in the promises of the Credo. And the thoroughgoing praise of the Te Deum (2021/2024), which also includes expressive soprano soloist Catherine Redding, comes across as even more skewed toward a darkness that its reassuring words are designed, if anything, to dissipate. Salvum fac populum tuum, “save thy people,” seems to be the primary message here, beyond the more-formulaic words of praise. And miserere nostri, the call to have mercy upon us, is another phrase that in Nickel’s setting seems more pleading than is justified by the verbiage speravimus in te: there is no overt suggestion that our trust is misplaced, but there is a degree of discomfort in asserting its presence and, as a result, some uncertainty about the final Te Deum words asking that we never be confounded. The Te Deum is more moderately paced than the Mass, with three of the four movements set “Andante,” but the concluding “Grave” produces a final feeling of the crepuscular, if not exactly of the dark. In this way the work’s ending and some of its music recall the exceptionally dour opening of the setting, which is brightened by Redding’s voice atop the choir’s – but not by the specific music she sings, which sounds much less like a song of praise than a rather tentative hope for better things than one actually expects. The unusual handling of the Mass and Te Deum will be clearest to listeners who are familiar with other composers’ more-straightforward handling of these words. But even those from other religious traditions, or none at all, will have no difficulty experiencing the uncertainties and sorrows that sound as if they pervade both these pieces. Nickel’s frequently downbeat settings are undeniably effective, but those who are familiar with the words of these works and with other arrangements of them will be left to look and listen elsewhere for the spiritual uplift that these texts, and the music to which they are typically set, traditionally invite an audience of believers.