An Uplifting 'Resurrection'

Mahler Symphony Makes for a Big Night for NSO

Even before the National Symphony Orchestra had played a note of its 2007-08 season, one of the clear highlights on the calendar was Iván Fischer conducting Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony.

For one thing, the "Resurrection," Mahler's second symphony, is always a big deal: a good hour and 20 minutes of music, with huge orchestral forces, vocal soloists, a full chorus and an ending that, as a musician once put it to me, lifts the top of your head off. For another, this is Fischer's last concert with the NSO before becoming principal conductor in the fall: a foretaste of things to come during his two-year appointment, or a glimpse of what might have been had he been named the orchestra's music director.

Perhaps most significantly, Fischer already had set the bar very high with his own remarkable recording of the work made with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, which he founded in 1983. The 2006 recording was powerful in unexpected ways: avoiding obvious pathos, yet strongly moving; its tempos distinctive, with marked rubatos that caught the ear but did not seem willful; and with a full-bodied, rich sound even in the near-silences between musical ideas. It was a hard act to follow, but raised considerable curiosity about how he would play the work with an orchestra very different from the Budapest, and less familiar to him.

The short answer is: very well. When last night's performance got it right, it was about as good as it gets. And if Fischer did not always lift the NSO to new heights, his approach probed it in stimulating ways, to which the players did their best -- often a very good best -- to respond.

The most notable thing about Fischer's approach is that he digs into the music so passionately and yet avoids heart-on-the-sleeve emotion. Strikingly, the only passage I felt was not wholly in his grasp was the melting second theme of the first movement, which represents Mahler at his most achingly yearning and whistleable, and which many conductors effortlessly milk. Fischer is not, apparently, interested in milking things. On the other hand, he could find more to say in Mahler's intense orchestral thunder-crashes than I have ever heard; they were not merely loud effects, but also strong statements, each with its own nuance.

What Fischer is interested in appears to be building an argument through a kind of gripping orchestral rhetoric. Musical statements -- including that second theme -- became more involving with each iteration. In general, he took his time to say things, with measured tempos that did not feel slow but gave each instrument time to speak fully, and holding out pauses to make sure the ideas had fully come across. His rubatos -- places where he slowed down markedly in the middle of a phrase -- had the effect of zooming in for a close-up: for example, in the second movement, at the start of the extended section of plucked strings. Fischer knew exactly where he was going -- the start of the final movement, in particular, was pregnant with audible prescience of the conclusion -- but he did not seem coy in the way he got there.

His interpretive choices were not quite as extreme in last night's performance as on the recording. And the orchestra was not quite as responsive as the Budapest, lacking, for one thing, the same fruity richness of brass. For all of the crackling energy at many moments, at times the performance sagged, when Fischer was not able to draw out the same level of vivid playing, or when a sustained note fell out of tune. In the first part of the final movement, ensemble issues interfered with the music's rowdy excitement.

The vocal soloists also were uneven. Jennifer Larmore was an odd choice for the powerful mezzo-soprano part, having neither the vocal nor the dramatic heft. She emoted a lot in an evening that otherwise avoided emoting, and achieved some choppy phrasing as a result. Juliane Banse, by contrast, making her debut with the orchestra, was every bit as wonderful as her recordings lead one to believe, with a rich soprano that went as low as Larmore's and sailed up to a radiant top.

And from its first taut and beautifully balanced entrance, the Master Chorale of Washington was superb. The chorus fully did its part to spark a glorious finale, in which Fischer suddenly, unexpectedly, began to move things along more quickly, generating exhilarating energy, though one wanted to stop and hold the moment. And as the whole company built in intensity, the chorus stood, section by section, in a perfect visualization of what was happening in the music -- which was, indeed, lifting the top of your head off. It is a shame Fischer will not, in the coming years, be developing the kind of relationship with this orchestra that would allow them fully to realize their potential in this work.

The program repeats tonight and tomorrow at 8 at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.