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SYMPHONY REVIEW
Forces Struggle in Stormy Mahler February 9, 2002
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By Stephanie Friedman
Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde ("The Song of the
Earth") is, to quote Winston Churchill in another context, "a riddle wrapped in
a
mystery inside an enigma." When is a song not a song? When is a song not
sung by a singer? When the orchestra, which has no text, sings it. Why did
Mahler write songs whose burden is carried by the orchestra? And what, in
such an instance, are the singers to do?
The San Francisco Symphony's performance of the work, under the
direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, with soloists Michael Schade, tenor
and Thomas Hampson, baritone, offered some solutions but left the
conundrum largely intact. The playing of the orchestra was so magnificent,
in fact, that the puzzle assumed only greater proportions.
The translation of the title is always the one mentioned above.
But it might be more accurate to say "The Song from the Earth," or even
"What the Earth Sings," so complete are the utterances given to the
orchestra. The brashness and beauty, the sorrow and exultation, the love
and the loss — everything this old earth has seen and can express of a
suffering, beauty-drunk humankind rings, blares, groans, throbs, aches,
and crashes like doom in the orchestra.
What is left to the singers? Why, to sing the text, of course; the very text that, in the form of early Chinese poetry and transmuted into the German language (by Hans Bethge), inspired Mahler in the first place to give profound voice to the orchestra. The text must be given back to the singers to utter, knowing that they will at times be completely submerged by the rapacious orchestra, that they will be challenged at every turn, vocally, interpretively, and in every other way, to stand their ground. It is an endurance test of the highest order. Mahler, in his reach for the Infinite, allowed his tenor to have his feet firmly on the ground in his songs (numbers 1, 3, and 5), which exult in drunkenness — "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde" ("The Song of Earth's Sorrow") and "Der Trunkene im Frühling" ("The Drunkard in Springtime"), and in delicate beauty, "Von der Jugend" ("Of Youth"). His challenges to the tenor are, at least, vocal and not interpretive. Michael Schade met and overcame them with a ringing, bright voice, attacking the ferocious high tessitura with strength and beauty. His reading of the milder song, "Of Youth", with its charming images of a porcelain pavilion and a mirror-still pond, was appropriately light-hearted and crisp. To the baritone (the lower voice was traditionally a contralto or mezzo until recent years: baritones wanted in) Mahler gave the real difficulties. Song #4, "Von der Schönheit" ("Of Beauty"), the companion piece to the tenor's "Of Youth", requires a tinge of irony but mainly fortitude in the lower register. Songs 2 and 6 — "Der Einsame im Herbst" ("The Lonely One in Autumn") and "Das Abschied" ("The Farewell"), however, are philosophical, mood-filled pieces. The singer is depicter and narrator. He/She must give voice to each emotion but never to the extent of entering into the orchestra's mighty utterances, or the battle will be lost. He must stand, as it were, on a separate planet somewhere removed from the pull of the sea of orchestration, telling what humankind feel as the orchestra is expressing it, telling what is happening as the orchestra is underlining it. Not an easy task, when the sounds around the singer are so seductive.
Thomas Hampson, at his imposing best and in gorgeous voice, sang his music beautifully, at times exquisitely, but was not convincing as an observer from a distant planet. He entered too fully into the emotions of the first of his songs and therefore could not stand aside to comfort afflicted humankind, nor to help them to an easy farewell and death in the final song. His pull against the orchestra was not strong enough. Perhaps it's asking too much that it be so, when he sang with such fervency a line like "Ja, gib mir Ruh, ich hab Erquickung Not" ("Yes, give me peace, I have need of comfort"). But weariness is in there too, a profound weariness of life. Mahler's sweeping arcs in the strings underline the deep lassitude of the singer/poet, but Hampson's tone and personality are simply too healthy to convey it. It is, however, possible (if not desirable) to be satisfied with his total performance simply from the way he breathed into "Die Erde atmet voll von Ruh und Schlaf" ("The earth breathes, full of rest and sleep"); or from the perfect open vowel in "blassen" ("pale"), evoking the loss of color of flowers in the twilight; or from the gentle, yet passionate longing in "Heimat" ("home") and "Lebewohl" ("farewell"), two words that resonate profoundly in German as well as in the "Song." The final section of the "Abschied," with words written by Mahler himself, is strangely unconnected to the rest of the song, a kind of tacked-on apotheosis for the narrator's departing friend at the end of his life, or perhaps even for all of humanity. The earth will continue to bloom without him, the text says, renewing itself everlastingly in the spring. It's a curiously hurried section, moving by means of a short bridge of whole-tone scalar motives from the end of the Wang Wei/Bethge poem — "Still ist mein Herz und harret seiner Stunde" ("My heart is still and awaits its hour") to the final "Die liebe Erde . . ." ("The beloved earth . . .").
The passage is marked triple piano for the voice, almost an impossibility to achieve in the relentlessly high tessitura, but not quite. Hampson and Tilson Thomas, however, performed the section forte, perhaps because of the vocal difficulty. But it was too energetic and the whole passage was transformed into a joyous romp towards heaven, surely thwarting what Mahler asked for in the score and offering no solution to this last mystery — what did Mahler want? The final words, "ewig . . . ewig . . ." ("eternally . . . eternally . . . ") at last allowed the soloist and the orchestra to float, blissfully intertwined, gently into silence. Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra preceded the Mahler, occupying briefly but with distinction the first half of the program. Tilson Thomas announced a Vorspeise to this brilliant appetizer, "an extra bonbon" in preparation for the symphony's New York trip: Theme and Variations, op. 43, written in 1944 when Schoenberg was in this country. However, it did not pique but rather dulled the appetite for the coming fare. (Stephanie Friedman, mezzo-soprano, has performed in this country and abroad, in opera and recital. She teaches vocal literature at U.C. Davis and Holy Names College.) ©2002 Stephanie Friedman, all rights reserved |