Carnegie Hall: James Levine Conducts Mahler

Yesterday afternoon's concert by the Met Orchestra featured James Levine on the podium conducting an all-Mahler program.  This was a long matinee, running two hours and twenty minutes, but Mr. Levine was indefatigable and displayed more energy than most conductors half his age.

The program opened with one of Mahler's earliest works, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), composed between 1883 and 1885 and revised some ten years later.  This is a work that was intended from the beginning as an arrangement for singer and full orchestra and is an early indication of the composer's tendency, perhaps because he himself was so capable a conductor, to think primarily in terms of symphonic music.  Indeed, certain elements of this cycle were later incorporated into the First Symphony.  The lieder themselves were written by Mahler after an unhappy love affair with soprano Johanna Richter and are stylistically influenced by the German folk poems contained in Des Knaben Wunderhorn.  The baritone at yesterday's performance was Peter Mattei whom I had never before heard but who gave a masterful rendition that was fully satisfying.

After intermission, the orchestra performed the Seventh Symphony (1905).  Though this is not one of Mahler's more popular works, it is among his most dazzling, especially in the inner movements - the two Nachtmusik pieces and the Scherzo.  This is not a driving work, but rather has about it something of the bildungsroman as it proceeds tentatively from one experience to the next.  As the program notes put it:

"Feeling like a sort of nocturnal, off-kilter version of the familiar idea of symphony-as-journey, the Seventh meanders through a fascinating, shadowy musical landscape on its path from darkness into light, often changing direction for unexpected diversions and always taking time to revel in the sights and sounds encountered along the way, no matter how bizarre."

Mahler himself listed influences on his composition of this work that range from Rembrandt's The Night Watch to the overture to Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.