Late-romantic symphonic splendor rides high in ISO's 'Greetings from Austria'

David Danzmayr is to the manner born.

Music-lovers can hardly feel they've been greeted from an exotic location when a symphony program focuses on Austria. So much of the core repertoire was produced and often premiered in and around Vienna that the options are generous when it comes to bringing forward the Austrian capital, which was once an imperial power in both cultural and political terms.

What's more, an Austrian guest conductor is on the Hilbert Circle Theatre podium this weekend to lead the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in a program of major works by Erich Korngold and Gustav Mahler. The first of two performances (the other is at 5:30 this afternoon) of "Greetings from Austria" showed David Danzmayr drawing upon an immense reservoir of energy and attention to detail. 

All that came to the fore in Mahler's Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor. Before intermission, the conductor's resources were fully committed to Stefan Jackiw's pristine interpretation of Korngold's Violin Concerto in D major.

The American concert violinist displayed a refreshingly unsentimental manner in the concerto by an Austrian wunderkind who achieved his greatest fame in this country writing movie scores. Korngold's melodies in this work reflect (often directly) the easy-to-absorb parade of tunefulness and filigree that served him so well in Hollywood. 

Jackiw carried forward the substantial material in the opening movement in a rhythmically propulsive manner, with the orchestra in full cry behind him. There was lots of spine in his tone — a great advantage in a work so fixated on the high register that it can take on an invertebrate or sugary limpness if too decorously played.

Stefan Jackiw skimmed the whipped cream off Korngold.

In the second-movement Romanze, orchestral shimmer, so useful a timbre in golden-age movie scoring, gets its character from vibraphone, celesta, and harp. Friday's performance had the requisite magic in place. The variety in phrasing and dynamics in the solo part was spellbinding. 

In the finale, the audience was treated to Jackiw's continued drive, precision, and melodic high spirits in music of dancing exuberance. Though the sustained enthusiasm of the audience's response would normally have brought forth an encore, the program's unusual length may have prompted an understanding between soloist and conductor that there would be none. If so, it was a smart decision: as it turned out, there was some leakage in audience size in the course of the Mahler, presumably due to the concert's length.

I was reminded during intermission that the Mahler Fifth had been scheduled toward the end of the 2019-20 ISO season. Like so many cultural seasons, the ISO's was cut short by the pandemic's initial onslaught in March 2020. It was good to have this challenging piece — necessitating an enlarged ensemble, superb control from the podium, and marathon-level orchestral endurance— back in place.

The late music director emeritus Raymond Leppard said from the onset of his tenure  (1987-2001) that the late-romantic repertoire — Richard Strauss in addition to Bruckner and Mahler — was ill-suited to the ISO's home hall. At bottom, Leppard had little enthusiasm for Mahler symphonies, and programmed only the Fourth, the tidiest and most soft-spoken of the nine complete ones. Many conductors, especially in the second half of the 20th century, developed audience interest in Mahler's elaborate, lengthy constructions and his apotheosis of the art song. He came to be seen as major.

So much excellence to absorb in Friday's performance — too much to enumerate. The march that characterizes the first movement had the right funereal cast. It sagged a bit, but just enough to solidify the tragic mood. The sagging had more to do with tempo than any looseness of ensemble. On the contrary, the ISO was clearly up to deliver the maximum impact. The opportunity was immediately available in the second movement, a proper cataclysm. Toward the end, intonation had begun to slip here and there. The tuning Danzmayr called for may have been planned all along; in any case, it was certainly advisable at this point.

Intonation was now in place, but the shaping of phrases in the Scherzo had rounded corners where it ought to have been more sharply angled. Once the movement settled down, the contrasting episodes gave the performance appropriate smoothness. The famous Adagietto, sometimes heard in isolation for commemorative purposes, brought out the best in the strings, with delicate, exquisitely timed punctuation of the harp. The passage before the full climax was marvelous, and the ending hit a peak of quiet elegance.

Aaron Copland once came up with an incisive image comparing Mahler's symphonies with Beethoven's. He said Beethoven is a great man walking down the street, while Mahler is a great actor playing a great man walking down the street. There's some justice in that comparison, though it probably nettles extreme Mahlerphiles.

The finale of this symphony lends considerable support to the comparison. On Friday, the ISO played it very well. The music is clearly overloaded with the emotional weight the composer intended for it. Its triumphant assertions at length could be described by today's vogue word "performative." That aspect simply has to be embraced to bring off such a piece. 

Having principals as expressive, even forcefully so, and on-target as first horn Robert Danforth, who got the first solo bow, helps immensely toward that end. Don't stint on the show-off aspect of Mahler, and you're doing fine as long as you have the textures and tempos coordinated and the steady vision to look over the horizon. That was the path Danzmayr and the ISO followed almost unerringly Friday night.