It’s a pity, really. Michael Tilson Thomas has the San Francisco Symphony playing with extreme responsiveness, and there are some wonderful moments in this Mahler Fifth, but the overall impression remains one of only partial success. Like so many conductors these days, MTT has lots of ideas, some good, some bad, and a seeming inability to tell one from the other. Among the good ideas: virtually all of the scherzo (after a somewhat choppily phrased opening section). The horns play magnificently, the transition out of the trio never has been more beautifully shaped, and the ensuing climaxes are perfectly timed. The next good idea, and it’s a biggie, is the remarkable contrapuntal clarity of a symphony that thrives on polyphony. Both the scherzo’s coda and the entire finale offer miracles of sectional balance and transparent phrasing. They are a joy.
Then there are the bad ideas: in the first movement, those little expressive hesitations that break the rhythmic back of the main theme; and in the second movement, Thomas’ odd and unnecessary rushing through the big brass choral and plodding through the final, climactic disintegration. Then there’s the Adagietto, no longer the simple, soulful song that Mahler wrote, but tortured and pulled about, its central section vulgarized and transformed into tasteless kitsch. The sonics also are among the most unflattering in this series: very dry, low-level, with a spotlight on the contrabassoon. The orchestra sounds small, the brass tinny, the strings desiccated–the latter totally at odds with the hothouse interpretation of the Adagietto. This could have, should have, been much better.
