Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The equation is further complicated by the unwritten requirement that an example of what’s loosely known as “music of our time” (which can be more than a half century old if it’s sufficiently hideous) be included in almost every concert. Such programming, ostensibly there to “educate the public,” always comes before the big number the audience is really there to hear.
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Eschenbach chose to move straight from this to the Alto Rhapsody, which also uses a men’s chorus. A Survivor From Warsaw is a report on depravity and despair that ends by edging toward the possibility of the divine. The Alto Rhapsody, with a text by Goethe, is a Werther-like account of unrequited love, but by placing it in the context of Schoenberg and Mahler’s works Eschenbach made it universal. Here its concluding lines–“If there is in your Psalter, Father of Love, one melody audible to his ear, then revive his heart! Open his unclouded eyes on the thousand fountains beside the thirsting one in the desert”–evoked a biblical setting.
So does Eschenbach, with his crisp, precise movements and absolute clarity of intention. He took some portions of the Mahler faster than conductors usually do, but it all worked nicely. He made the most of the dynamic possibilities, which meant that some softer portions were drowned out by passing aircraft and the cicada obbligato, and the louder parts forced some people around me to cover their ears. The only real disappointment or the evening was coconcertmaster Ruben Gonzalez’s decidedly mediocre violin solos in the Mahler.
