Salonen Concludes Tenure with Mahler

“Poster design” for the SFS Web page for this week’s performance, suggesting the challenges in both conducting and listening to Mahler’s music

This week marks the conclusion of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s tenure as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). For his final selection, he presented Gustav Mahler’s second (“Resurrection”) symphony in C minor. This required the full forces of the orchestral ensemble with the final movement bringing in the SFS Chorus, prepared by its Director Jenny Wong, as well as vocal solo performances by soprano Heidi Stober and mezzo Sasha Cooke.

Salonen’s command of these resources and the full extent of detail in the composer’s score could not have been better. Mahler’s rhetorical “sweet spot” is one of intense climaxes, usually approached along a gradual path of accumulating force. Mind you, it is often the case that, when Mahler encounters an episode with its own self-contained narrative, he has no trouble repeating himself. Nevertheless, Salonen clearly knew how to shape the full scope of the symphony’s five movements to avoid any here-we-go-again moments.

For the most part the music is dominated by the instrumental resources. The symphony is in five movements, but the first three are entirely instrumental. The fourth brings in the mezzo for the first time, in setting of the “Urlicht” (primal light) verses from the Des Knaben Wunderhorn anthology of folk poetry. Even in the final movement, the first half is instrumental, bringing the chorus and solo vocalists in only for the second half. (Indeed, the beginning of the second half is marked by a cappella singing by the chorus.)

Mind you, a viable metaphor for this symphony would be a collection of islets in a vast ocean, all of which are volcanos. Each has its own capacity for eruption, and one never knows which one will let loose at what time. To be fair, Mahler is a bit more forgiving. He has extended passages with piano dynamics and solo instrumental passages that lay out the geography of the ocean, so to speak. However, in the midst of this tranquility, there are the eruptions, some of which explode spontaneously, while others result from a gradual mounting of energy. In other words, Mahler has done his level best to seize the attention of the listener from the very beginning and maintain that attention until the final roaring instrumental cadence.

Salonen clearly knew how to “go out with a bang,” and he will be missed.