Music review: The Washington Chorus’s all-Mahler extravaganza at Kennedy Center

The Washington Chorus’s all-Mahler extravaganza at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Sunday conjured memories of “Mahler Is Heavy,” a psychedelic-art-covered 1960s compilation of the composer’s trippiest symphonic movements. There was some decidedly heavy Mahler served up on Sunday, all conducted with go-for-broke zeal — and a genuine feeling for the composer’s dramatic ebb and flow — by Julian Wachner.

An adrenaline-fueled reading of the gargantuan Eighth Symphony’s opening movement drew a suitably massive sound from the chorus, and from the soloists provided by the Wagner Society of Washington’s Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart Emerging Singers Program — most notably soprano Othalie Graham, tenor Stefano Algieri and bass Pawel Izdebski, whose voices seared through the orchestral fabric. The finale of the “Resurrection” Symphony, a choral arrangement of one of the Ruckert songs (with wonderfully hushed singing from the chorus) and the “Bimm Bamm” chorus from the Third Symphony (featuring fresh-voiced choristers from Washington National Cathedral) were equally well turned.

But it was a pair of substantial Mahler rarities that really upped the interest level. An abridged Act 3 from Mahler’s completion/orchestration of Weber’s opera “Die Drei Pintos” (narrated by Evelyn Lear, and featuring more lyrical voices, including soprano Colleen Daly and baritones Jose Sacin and Bryan Jackson) was treated with a Straussian lightness of touch. And the seldom-performed “Waldmarchen” movement from “Das Klagende Lied” — occupying a stylistic middle ground between Humperdinck’s fairy-tale music and Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” — drew particularly impressive playing from a pickup orchestra that performed some punishing scores remarkably well all evening.

Banno is a freelance writer.