Philistine: Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand.
Mahler's Symphony No. 8 concludes with the Choir singing Goethe's words, amongst which: "All that is impermanent is merely a symbol. Here the unattainable becomes real. The indescribable - here it is done." Attempting to describe last Saturday's performance, the verses resonate with us even more: it was a visceral experience to attend the performance, one for which the words fail us. The indescribable, there it was done. The music, as impermanent a fleeting moment can be, haunted us long afterwards.
The 8th Symphony is a monumental work, involving the full orchestra, three choirs and eight soloists, plus the organ and a harmonium. The harmonium was off-stage, supposedly to tmper its sound a bit, but really because the packed musicians needed a bit more room than the middle seat in economy class. We are talking about 500 bodies on the stage, and that they all were there on time is just a feat in itself.
Due to the sheer power of the numbers, it is a work which let itself be experienced in a very primal way. One can immerse in the details of the score, or attempt to follow the lyrics helpfully provided in the program, but we opted to take in the waves of sound coming at us as an exclusively sensorial experience.
They symphony is divided in two parts. The first one is pretty much an oratorio, based on Veni, creator spiritus, a 9th century hymn which part of the liturgy for Pentecost, celebrated this year last Sunday, making Saturday concert quite appropriate. The choirs and orchestra opened the symphony on loud, on a full choir, orchestra and organ chord, and never relented during the first part. We felt like a surfer hanging on to his board while waves and waves of sounds came crashing upon him. To be honest, by the end of the first part, we were a bit groggy: the hymn asks the Creator-Spirit to come, but obviously, asking again and again in a more and more forceful tone was not getting Him to budge during the first half-hour. Maybe try saying please next time. The raw power lacked the warmth of a supplication, and the tone was too shiny, not rounded enough.
On the other hand, the second part was much more modulated. A splendid part for orchestra tiptoes into the proceedings, where the basses play pizzicato a theme which is almost a symmetrical motif of the first part opening theme. Then the choir steps in, hushed, with flutes hovering above like buzzing mosquitoes. The second part is the arrival of the essence of Faust into Heaven, after he passed away. It sets to score the last lines of the second Faust of Goethe, an 1832 text which is, let's say, rather mystical.
Different intervenant take turn singing the praises of Faust or the Lord. Among the participants, we were absolutely blown away by Stephanie Blythe. She was just so smooth, so easy. While the other singers were making obvious effort to gather the power to withstand the strength of the choir and orchestra, she just oozed the songs, shaping the tone in a lush color, controlling the pitch perfectly. She was just comfortable you had to double check she was the one singing. She will be back on this stage next week in the Verdi Requiem, but we seriously hope David Gockley saw this performance, as we WANT to see her in the building next door.
Bass James Johnson similarly impressed us. In the sonic deluge of the first part, he stood out as a beacon of controlled restraint. Marisol Montalvo did not exhude the tranquility of these guys, and sometimes we felt she was squeezing every last drop of juice out of her voice, but the girl's got range. She went to fetch some notes up there that we'd need a firetruck ladder to get to. Talking about being up there, Jennifer Welch-Babidge, as the Glorious Mother, must have wanted to appear on a trapeze with flapping white wings, but settled down on showing up in some alcove all the way up next to the organ pipes. Still we feared for her safety, and were relieved her part was only two lines long. "Rise to higher spheres," she said, to which we wanted to reply we'd be right up, just don't look down.
She did not exhort us to come upwards, but Doctor Marianus, ie. tenor Anthony Dean Griffey. All the rising up had him huffing and puffing, slightly out of breath, as if he got carried away trying to compete, volume-wise, against the other musicians. MTT's conducting of the second part showed a lighter touch than in the first. As an example of subtle delicacy, he conducted a change in the rhythm during the trio of the penitents which was devilishly smooth.
The second part showed more texture than the first, yet the ending still got our hair rising, fully immersing us in the full power of all the performers. The choirs really were the stars of the evening: the San Francisco Symphony choir, and two kid's choirs, the Pacific Boychoir and the San Francisco Girls Chorus. In toto, there were about 300 singers. Since you don't find that many singers under the hoof of a horse, we conjecture that the San Francisco Symphony Choir was created because of Mahler 8th, as it was performed in 1972, by Seiji Ozawa with the Stanford University Chorus, the year the SFS Choir was founded. If you could back up our theory, let us know. Some of the kids were so cute and little, and they went through the trouble of learning their parts by heart: kids nowadays are just plain amazing.