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BEN ZANDER & THE NEC PHILHARMONIA
ANGUISHED MAHLER



Once a cult phenomenon as the Mahler-aficionado music director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Ben Zander is on a publicity roll. His weathered, handsome visage will grace the March/April cover of Fanfare, one of the English language’s few remaining publications devoted to the serious consideration of classical music; there’s a substantial interview and two reviews — both favorable — of his new Telarc recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London (it’s due in stores this Tuesday, February 24). As you read this, he’ll have just finished the first of his two Symphony Hall concerts of Mahler’s Second Symphony, the Resurrection, with the BPO; the second will take place this Sunday afternoon, February 22, and there’ll be a third performance at Carnegie Hall in New York on February 29. (Look for Lloyd Schwartz’s review of the Symphony Hall dates in next week’s Phoenix.) Still, he wasn’t too busy — or too famous — to perform the Mahler Ninth with the New England Conservatory Philharmonia (formerly the Honors Orchestra) at Jordan Hall a week ago Wednesday.

Following Mahler’s practice, Zander split the violins so that the firsts were on his left and the seconds on his right; this is the arrangement for which virtually the entire pre-20th-century symphonic repertoire was written, and you can expect to see it regularly at Symphony Hall next season when James Levine takes over as the BSO’s music director. The pianissimo initial horn calls were a little tentative, and there was a bad moment at bars 115-116 of the opening Andante comodo when the trumpets didn’t come in over the stopped horns, but otherwise only the odd brass wobble or slightly sour intonation blotted creditable playing that included first-rate first-desk solos from Gabriela Diaz (concertmistress), Boris Vayner (viola), Sarah Tiedemann (flute), and Victoria Newton (oboe), Erin Simmons (E-flat clarinet), and Erin Svoboda (bass clarinet). Zander asked for a rough, raucous sound, with palpable rather than assimilated subordinate lines, and the orchestra delivered.

The interpretation was a little more problematic. Zander these days seems focused on making every detail audible, as if fidelity to the score could pre-empt criticism. But at bar 148 of the Andante, where Mahler fashions (with evident irony) a dialogue for first and second violins from the Johann Strauss waltz "Freut euch des Lebens" ("Enjoy Life"), the seconds were covered by the clarinets and bassoons. And at the end of the movement, the solo oboe was mezzo forte instead of the marked pianissimo. These weren’t isolated incidents. Zander wanted us to hear more than just strings, and he wanted to underline the anguish that indeed fills this symphony, but I think there’s more beauty and redemption here than he found. At times, too, shape got sacrificed to sound. The orchestra should stagger away from the first-movement climaxes, shocked by the return of the First Symphony’s "Blumine" theme; here the music just rolled on as if nothing cataclysmic had happened.

The second-movement ländler/waltz/minuet had well-judged tempo relationships, though the ländler seemed a shade heavy and static and the whole seemed a shade self-conscious. For the "Rondo-Burleske" scherzo, Zander adopted a steady tempo and stuck to it, underlining the counterpoint; only the annunciating trumpet didn’t quite open up. He conducted the closing Adagio with lyric clarity and force, and when on the last page Mahler alludes to the Kindertotenlieder moment where the singer believes his dead children are still alive, there was no want of tenderness. A restive audience coughed through the last dozen bars, which may have needed to be faster or else slower still. But at 64, Zander keeps taking his personal "Mahler Journey" where it hasn’t been before, and that’s always to his credit.

BY JEFFREY GANTZ

Issue Date: February 20 - 26, 2004
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