Carnegie Hall: Vienna Philharmonic Performs Schubert and Mahler

Yesterday evening, the Vienna Philharmonic returned to Carnegie Hall to perform two well known symphonies as part of the concert hall's ongoing Vienna: City of Dreams celebration.  The conductor for the occasion was Christoph Eschenbach who was filling in for the ailing Daniele Gatti.

The first piece on the program was the Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (1822), famously known as the "Unfinished Symphony," by Franz Schubert.  Consisting of only two completed movements, there has always been a great deal of controversy over why the composer (who lived another six years) failed to complete it or whether in fact it actually is incomplete in the first place.  Since these questions will almost certainly never be answered, there is really not much point discussing them.  Though it contains some of Schubert's best orchestral music, to me it has never been more than a haunting fragment and frustrating in its inconclusiveness.  It never really lives up to the promise of its opening theme.  One feels that if Schubert had managed to complete it, the symphony would have been one of the great masterworks of the orchestral repertoire rather than the enigma it remains in its present form.

After intermission, the orchestra performed the second and final piece, the Symphony No. 4 in G (1900) by Gustav Mahler.  The choice of a Mahler symphony was particularly appropriate for a concert by this orchestra.  Although the composer held a number of conducting appointments during his career (including, in this city, both the New York Philharmonic and the Met Opera), he is most often associated with his tenure as music director of the Vienna Philharmonic.  This association may in large part be due to virulent anti-Semitism he endured while at that post until he was finally forced to resign.  It was a shameful episode that in subsequent years has conferred upon Mahler an aura of martyrdom that unfortunately too often distracts attention from his accomplishments as a composer.

The entire symphony is really built around the poem, Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life) at the end of the final movement.  Everything that comes before only leads up to this climax, but it is a very gentle one when it finally arrives and the music fades away in a hush.  Soprano Juliane Banse, whom I'd never heard before, was excellent and captured very well the sense of childish wonder implicit in the lyrics.

The second movement scherzo is also of interest insofar as it demonstrates that Mahler's preoccupation with death commenced long before the diagnosis of his own terminal heart condition.  This "dance of death" was supposedly inspired, according to an account by Alma Mahler, by the painting Self Portrait with Death (1872) by the Symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin.

I had been very interested in seeing Mr. Eschenbach conduct this concert.  Ever since his abrupt departure as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2008, he has been a lightning rod for controversy with supporters and detractors of his conducting abilities arguing vociferously with one another in the media.  Many of the details have been set forth in the Wikipedia article devoted to him.  He certainly seemed in control yesterday evening.  Both pieces were well articulated, though the tempo for the Mahler symphony seemed a bit slow and drawn out at times.