The long view is sunny, the short view is stormy: ISO guest conductor casts light on Mahler and Haas

 Joshua Weilerstein has become almost a familiar face among the roster of guest conductors filling the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Classical Series schedule. In 2021, he helped the orchestra emerge from the pandemic after 14 idle months, and he has been back on the Hilbert Circle Theatre podium as recently as last April. 

This weekend he brings to a close a stunning two months of ISO concerts with the most life-affirming music he knows (as he said in the pre-concert "Words on Music"): Gustav Mahler's Symphony no. 1 in D ("Titan").

But the conductor's special pride this visit is the North American premiere of an unfinished symphony by Pavel Haas, like Mahler a middle-European Jew, but especially unfortunate in that his later birthdate subjected him to Nazi extinction at 45 at Auschwitz. (Mahler died of a heart condition at 50 in 1911.) From a distinguished musical family, Weilerstein has a special interest in this music in response to the disturbing re-emergence nowadays of antisemitism; three family members of his were victims of the Holocaust.

The current program (to be repeated at 5:30 this afternoon) has just those two works; no guest soloist is

Joshua Weilerstein always makes a firm impression with the  ISO.

involved, a relatively rare phenomenon in the schedule. Friday's premiere gave a large, youthful audience the first exposure to Haas, whose music was composed under forced confinement in 1940-41 and completed in 1994 by Zdenek Zouhar. The composer had been killed in 1944.

At first hearing, the piece clearly expresses the stress of its creation. Weilerstein's helpful oral program notes from the stage certainly helped clarify matters. Haas (with Zouhar's posthumous assistance) asks for a large orchestra, and he uses it with unstinting forcefulness. The brooding start morphs into full-ensemble blasts of assertion. After a diminuendo suggesting exhaustion more than temperate calm, themes representing Jewish and gentile cultures combine in a manner to suggest that the diverse influences belong together, and that in a better world their coexistence would be celebrated.

The second movement moves explicitly into the realm of parody. Suddenly emergent march music at first (no strings allowed!) sounded as sarcastic as any of Shostakovich's marches. The climax of this episode was exciting, and the air clears slightly as a waltz takes over. On the whole, Haas' symphony speaks expansively through a world of pain. It deserves further occasional exposure, perhaps best under the guiding hand of Weilerstein as he continues to be invited to podiums elsewhere.

Understandably, the Haas is effective in a thematic sense as a concert companion to the Mahler "Titan." I'm not sure that it gives the orchestra the right kind of workout to make the most of the Austrian composer's subtlety. On the other hand, as I said in reviewing Weilerstein's appearance here last year, the conductor is "a dependable catalyst for the orchestra's outpouring of vitality," and that exerted its full power Friday night throughout the Mahler's four movements. So what I took as a sharp-angled exercise in straightforwardness might well stand on its own as the best way to approach the work.

Justifiably, perhaps, Weilerstein cleared away a lot of the mystificaiton that surrounds this symphony, much of which Mahler generated and became ambivalent about. Should the way a symphony is described by a composer, with programmatic suggestions as to its significance, remain relevant to listeners? The ISO's program annotator, Marianne Williams Tobias, goes into the composer's hemming and hawing about the composition's meaning. Patrons who read it will be well-armed to take in the "Titan" as a bewitching journey whose twists and turns can benefit from a "let's get on with it, shall we?" approach.

Friday's performance displayed flexibility of tempo in the first movement, so I don't want to suggest anything mechanical about the interpretation. There was also a full spectrum of dynamics. But for those who like their Mahler spiritually juicy, Weilerstein's approach may not have been ideal. It commanded sustained attention, to be sure, and the sharpness of accents, especially in the second-movement scherzo, was extraordinary. Small flecks of color in the parodistic third movement were brightly applied. Ornamental notes in the way the chief "Frere Jacques" theme is treated in the ersatz klezmer episode sounded cheeky and spontaneous. Local color had its place, to be sure.

In the finale, the recollection of the first movement conveyed the right feeling of a needed pause in the headlong rush to the final measures, with the expanded horn section standing and roaring anthemically. The triumphant atmosphere prevails at last; life has been affirmed, though echoes of Shoah remain.

That conclusion brought forth answering roars from the young audience that sounded like something you might hear at Hinkle Fieldhouse or IU's Assembly Hall. The ovation included several bursts of loud acclaim as Weilerstein signaled individuals and sections to stand and bask in the glory.