Salonen: the grand finale

For his last-ever program as music director of the San Francisco Symphony (though he didn't know it would be his last-ever when he scheduled it), Esa-Pekka Salonen chose Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony, big enough to make a concert by itself. Ordinarily I'd skip out on an all-Mahler program, but I decided to attend this one (first of three performances) not just because it was EPS's last, but because I was so impressed with his interpretation of Mahler's Third at the end of last year's season.

And it wasn't as revelatory, but still extremely interesting. As with the Third, EPS divided the Second up into two unanticipated parts.

The dramatic and somber (with placid interludes) first movement of the Second is the only piece of Mahler's which can be played to sound as if it might have been written by Mahler's mentor Anton Bruckner. EPS did not direct it that way. Instead, he had it sound like the anti-Bruckner: the sound was bright, clean-cut, and almost crystal-clear throughout. If it was dark at all, it came in touches where it was creepy in the way that Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre is creepy.

The result of this is that the delicate and wistful second movement intermezzo, which is intended to be as incongruously different from the first movement as possible, sounded just like it. Placid and calm? Yes, just like the interludes in the first movement. Loud and dramatic moments? (Yes, it has them: this is Mahler, after all.) As clear and simply bright as the first movement's.

So the first two movements were the ad hoc part 1 of Salonen's version of the Second. The third movement scherzo turned out to be the beginning of part 2. The climax at the end of this was the first loud passage in the symphony to be at all rough and chaotic or, to put it more bluntly, to sound as if it had been composed by Mahler. The long instrumental opening of the choral finale, written as something of a return to the first movement's approach, was here hairier and irregular and much more like the end of the scherzo.

What most impressed with the finale was EPS's command of the extremes of dynamics. At the choral climax, the SFS Chorus, some 140 strong, was beefy and powerful enough to stride over the full noise of the orchestra, and the final instrumental-only conclusion made an even mightier roar with multiple sets of timpani banging away and the organ at full throttle, the way I always want to hear it at the climaxes of works like Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony or Holst's "Uranus" from The Planets.

On the other hand, the quiet was really quiet. It's difficult for a large chorus to sing as intensely quietly as Mahler directs its opening passage to be (ppp), but this ensemble managed that hush. The instrumental side could be just as quiet. EPS managed the passages with an offstage band to come across so softly that they were in perfect volume balance with active onstage performers of nothing but one flute and one piccolo.

Not to forget the work's two solo singers. Heidi Stober's soprano repeatedly rose beautifully out of the chorus, but even greater honors are due to acclaimed mezzo Sasha Cooke, who in addition to parts in the finale has a solemn and subdued prelude song, "Urlicht," between the scherzo and the finale, which she conveyed as sweet and coy in her powerful deep voice.

Huge applause afterwards for all concerned, including Chorus director Jenny Wong, who's rapidly establishing herself as the best director this choir has ever had. Unlike last week, EPS consented to take a couple of curtain calls by himself as well, though he insisted on taking them standing in the middle of the orchestra, somewhere between the second violins and violas, as if to emphasize he considers himself just one of the fabulous musicians on stage.

And thus concludes EPS's five-year tenure as Music Director of SFS. He'll turn 67 at the end of this month, a prime age for a conductor, and we could have had him for much longer if only incompetent and clueless management hadn't driven him to let his contract expire and leave. He's not returning as a guest next season and we might well never have him again. What a loss.