Mahler: Symphony No. 9. Park Avenue Chamber Symphony conducted by David Bernard. Recursive Classics. $20.98.
One of the most distinctive elements of Mahler’s style is the way he calls for a huge orchestra and then is so often sparing in his use of it, focusing on individual sections and often on single instruments or small instrumental groups, reserving the full orchestral sound for times when he wants to make specific points. Chamber versions of Mahler’s orchestral music do exist, notably those made under the auspices of Arnold Schoenberg for his Society for Private Musical Performances. And an understanding of the special sound and balance within a chamber orchestra can bring considerable insight into Mahler’s music even when an ensemble – its title notwithstanding – is no longer chamber-music size. That is the case with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, now a full-scale group of more than 80 musicians that is still conducted by David Bernard with a clear understanding of its chamber-size roots and the exigencies of performing with a smaller collection of players. It is the chamber-related elements of Bernard’s Recursive Classics reading of Mahler’s Ninth that are among the performance’s most attractive, since the many solos within the symphony stand out here as clearly as if the musical collective were much smaller than it actually is.
The first movement starts very quietly and delicately, and the melodic lines are very clean and clear, as they would tend to be with a smaller grouping – but a sense of swelling and momentum quickly establishes itself. The movement sounds thoughtful rather than almost dismal, as it does in some performances. The emotionalism is if anything rather understated, with the horn punctuations adding touches of warmth. The pacing is on the fast side, although it never feels rushed – it is more a matter of being propulsive, which is not an adjective usually applied to this movement. But Bernard does not hesitate to slow down when that is called for, giving portions of the movement a feeling of expansiveness. This could be a somewhat divisive interpretation, but it is convincing because the instrumental solos within the movement, a characteristic that gives it its texture, are all put forward with admirable clarity and no sense of straining to be heard while struggling to emanate from a large ensemble. Harp, flute, violin, timpani, horn: each has its carefully crafted place in the overall soundscape. The sense of quiet beauty at the movement's end is particularly notable; there is certainly nothing portentous here.
There is a level of puckishness to the start of the second-movement Ländler, followed by a rather halting and awkward rhythm that supports the stop-and-go sound of the movement well. The strong emphases later in the movement fit the music to good effect, with timpani accents providing enough stolidity to create the impression of a kind of stomping dance. This is a curiously episodic, emotionally uncertain and somewhat unstable movement that Bernard holds together essentially by force of will. The sequence of solos as the movement ends is emblematic of its peculiarly unfocused aural and emotional world, and Bernard ensures that the movement ends in the same quirky spirit in which it began.
Bernard's third movement is a tour de force from the start. Here there is a communicative tightness that stands at the opposite emotive end from the second movement. Compressed, energetic and determined, the movement strides forth boldly and determinedly and its momentum never flags. However, the grotesque elements are somewhat downplayed here, the exclamations of individual instruments coming across as more decorative and less pointed than in some performances. The burnished brass and the slightly echo-y sound go a long way toward making this movement warmer than it often is. By somewhat de-emphasizing the grotesqueries, Bernard makes for a lesser contrast between the third movement and the finale, whose opening is not as shocking a contrast as it is in some other readings.
As the concluding Adagio opens, pronounced dissonance at the start quickly gives way to a warm flow that indicates this will be a deeply emotional movement throughout, and so it proves to be. Now the strings really come into their own, by turns yearning and deeply expressive. The movement's pervasive lyricism is anything but depressed or resigned: the sense here is of flow and continuity throughout, with this movement as a symphonic capstone that also hints of more to come. Bernard's reading in some ways produces parallels with the finale of Mahler’s Third, which also flows in a strong current of lyricism that, however, is conclusive in D major in a way that this finale in D-flat is not. Not quite. There is nevertheless in both finales a sense of having arrived at a far-from-predetermined destination, and feeling content with being there. As the finale of this Ninth progresses, Bernard turns up the emotional temperature without straying into overstatement: throughout the symphony, there is a sense of careful control that at times can be a bit much (it would have been all right if the third movement had sounded as if it was on the verge of explosive disintegration) but that in this Adagio ensures momentum constantly toward a journey's end of which there have only been hints in the three earlier movements. And it is a very satisfying conclusion indeed: this was not Mahler's final symphony, and in this performance the final portion is scarcely death-haunted, instead moving surely toward a Mahlerian view of the peace that passeth all understanding, and at the very end evaporating into the ineffable.
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