Gustavo Dudamel Conducts Mahler #3

I went on Sunday afternoon to David Geffen Hall to hear Gustavo Dudamel lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a performance of Mahler's Third Symphony.  I'd previously heard a radio broadcast during which Dudamel conducted this same work with the Berliner Philharmoniker, but this was the first opportunity I'd had to actually see him on the podium.  I was interested to know if in person he would live up to all the acclamation with which he's inundated during the past several years.

At approximately one hour and forty minutes, the Third is the longest symphony Mahler ever wrote, and for that matter one of the longest in the entire repertoire.  For that reason alone it's one of the composer's most infrequently performed works.  It is a demanding experience for both listeners and musicians that requires total immersion in an imaginative world whose meaning, despite the programmatic titles that were later dropped, is never made explicit.

The powerful and loud opening of the first movement, marked Kräftig. Entschieden, reminded me of the opening of Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, written at roughly the same time as the Third; but the music soon sank to a more introspective level.  It was as if in this long movement Mahler was creating a setting from which the five movements of the second half would evolve.

The two movements in the second half that most catch the listener's attention are the fourth and fifth. These are both choral pieces but of entirely different forms.  The fourth is the setting of Nietzsche's "Midnight Song" from Also sprach Zarathustra, a work published only a few years earlier that had exerted an incredible influence on European thought, particularly in Germany.  Sung by alto alone, it is soft and meditative as it explores the depths of both suffering and joy.  Its introspective musings contrast sharply with the deceptively playful children's chorus of the fifth movement, "Es sungen drei Engel" from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.  This leads directly into the lengthy adagio the concludes the symphony.  Here the work finds its resolution in the most stately form imaginable.  The world Mahler has created here becomes complete.

The world "colossal" could equally well be applied to both the symphony itself and its performance on Sunday afternoon.  Whatever reservations I might have had concerning Dudamel's ability were totally dissipated here.  His was a tour de force fully equal to the complexity of Mahler's score.  It was every bit as good, if not better, than Leonard Bernstein's 1987 recording with the New York Philharmonic.  And Dudamel had able assistance from the other participants.  The Los Angeles Philharmonic demonstrated convincingly that it was a world class ensemble, and the two choruses - the Concert Chorale of New York led by Thomas Bagwell and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus led by Dianna Berkun Menaker - were exceptional as was mezzo soprano Tamara Mumford.  This was a truly historic performance that will long be remembered by everyone who was lucky enough to  have attended.