Carnegie Hall, New York: October 10, 2002
Let’s get right the point: there was a lot to enjoy in Michael Tilson Thomas’ Mahler Third, and what problems there were stem from the strange fact that most conductors eventually become their own worst enemies. Tilson Thomas evidently is no exception. It could be that after years of playing the same stuff, today’s podium virtuosi simply get bored. Or perhaps much of the music has become too easy for players and music directors alike, and so they feel the need to start tinkering just to keep themselves amused. Or maybe the fault lies with the cocoon of mindless adulation that many performing arts organizations (and the artists themselves) avidly cultivate, welcoming insulation from constructive criticism (at best), and even reality (at worst). In considering Michael Tilson Thomas’s often fine, but equally problematic view of Mahler’s Third Symphony, it’s useful to keep the above in mind because nothing else accounts for the schizoid nature of the performance–the shards of brilliance interspersed with moments of sheer narcissistic self-indulgence.
Let’s start with what Tilson Thomas indisputably has going for him: a fabulous orchestra willing to respond to his every whim. The San Francisco Symphony has a marvelously rich ensemble sound: big string tone, full but never vulgar brass (particularly sensational horns on this occasion), spot-on percussion, and characterful winds (except for the lousy flutes, this orchestra’s Achilles’ heel for decades). They raised the roof at the climaxes, and that counts for a lot in Mahler (and in Romantic music generally). Even more important, they produce an equally tactile and well balanced pianissimo that never sounds denatured or artificially soft. Tilson Thomas also has an excellent podium technique. He almost never misses a cue, controls dynamics, phrasing, and balances with precision, and seems seldom if ever to lose his concentration. Yet this very skill can become a liability if the conductor allows himself to micro-manage a performance to the extent that much of the necessary vitality, naturalness, and flow simply disappears, and this is exactly what happened here.
Start with the seating arrangement. Tilson Thomas correctly had the orchestra positioned as in Mahler’s day, with violins divided stereophonically right and left, cellos and basses center left, violas center right. This captured the interplay between string lines that Mahler intended, but it also exposed the second violins to unaccustomed scrutiny. Combined with Tilson Thomas’s insistence on exaggerated dotted rhythms in the first movement’s “summer” march when it first appears, played by the back stands only, and the result was sloppy and ill-coordinated. The same problem plagued the opening of the third movement, which was simply too fast to maintain tight ensemble (and bring out the music’s earthy character). On the other hand, the entire second movement sounded gorgeous: the music invites lots of rubato, stretched phrasing, and so forgives a heavy hand from the podium. Here Tilson Thomas was clearly in his element.
Next there is the issue of what I can only call “trust” between the conductor and his principal players, and the control he tries to exert over them. Mahler’s Third is full of important solos, principally for trombone in the first movement, and offstage trumpet (or posthorn) in the third. These should be treated as mini-concertos, and it’s the conductor’s job to follow the player, not the other way around. This Tilson Thomas refused to do. He couldn’t relinquish control, and thus caused the orchestra’s principal trombone to sound shaky as he obviously worried about subdividing the beat when he should have been playing the music with unselfconscious freedom. The conductor made an even worse mess of the posthorn solos in the third movement, where in trying to handle his tempo adjustments the player more than once lost his rhythm, got out of sync with the onstage horns, and so inevitably cracked notes. You may say that cracked notes are the player’s fault. Well, they are, up to a point, but it also depends on what he is trying to do when he starts cracking them, and who is making him do it.
Tilson Thomas was equally unkind to the otherwise estimable contralto Michelle DeYoung. Her voice so wanted to soar at the climax of the fourth movement, and how earthbound and stiff she sounded trying to measure her tones to keep time with Tilson Thomas’s affected musical phrasing! No problems in the choral fifth movement, though, which featured a spectacularly impressive central climax and excellent contributions from the two choirs. Alas, the finale brought out the conductor’s very worst, despite an absolutely incandescent final climax and thrilling closing pages. Tilson Thomas has a habit, and a bad one, of marking the end of every major section, phrase, or transition with a big ritard followed by a hard downbeat. Ensemble problems regularly crop up during the ritards, where everyone has to stop what they are doing and watch him noodle around with the last couple of beats or so before moving on, and the result sectionalizes the music and interrupts its onward flow. Interestingly, in the previous night’s Ein Heldenleben this wasn’t a problem because Strauss’s perpetual fluidity of rhythm accepts such interpretive touches as a sort of tightening of the work’s otherwise loose structural joints. With Mahler though, where rhythm is always strongly marked, such treatment stops the music’s progress dead in its tracks.
It may sound from all of this carping that the performance was a poor one. Not true. It was by and large very good, because Tilson Thomas is basically a fine conductor and he was starting (as noted above) from strength. And not all of his ideas are bad ones; he offered many keenly observed details (particularly in the first three movements), and his care over proper dynamics and accentuation rendered even the most complex textures effortlessly transparent–a “must” in Mahler. Much of the performance was a joy to listen to, and certainly it had vastly more character than his resolutely uninteresting studio recording with the LSO for Sony. It’s just frustrating to see so much talent defeating its own best intentions simply because there’s no one to take this otherwise excellent musician, slap him upside the head (figuratively speaking), and say “OK, that’s enough. Listen to what you are doing. You are becoming predictable and mannered. Your musicians are having trouble following you. So just relax and let the players play now and then. You don’t need to shape and control every single note.” Whatever may work with other composers, Tilson Thomas’ particular interpretive arsenal, at least at this stage in his career, does not always produce an idiomatic Mahler style, and it didn’t here.
David Hurwitz
