Mahler 3: What the Minnesota Orchestra and its emeritus maestro tell me

Years ago one of the alternative tabloids that flourished briefly here published an interview with the

Osmo Vänskä has the vision and the vehicle.

Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's new music director in which he delivered a dismissive assessment of Gustav Mahler's music. 

I wish I'd saved it, because Raymond Leppard summed up the personal mood swings embedded in Mahler's works somewhat in this manner: "Oh, I'm glorious and blessed by God; Oh, I'm such a  sh*t!"

My attempted paraphrase becomes an exact quote in the second phrase, as I was shocked that a symphony music director would express his disdain in such vulgar terms. But the Leppard dislike took hold, and I believe the only Mahler that Leppard programmed as music director (1987-2001) was the gentle, heaven-focused Symphony No. 4, which never visits the outhouse.

Despite the permanent vogue Mahler now enjoys, there has long been a history of rejection, or at least resistance, among some professional musicians and critics . In an essay about Anton Bruckner, an older contemporary with whom Mahler is puzzlingly bracketed, the 20th-century music critic Paul Rosenfeld delivered this praise: "What came out of Bruckner and became song of instruments is unmarred by the choking fingers of the floating mind." 

From what I recall of what Rosenfeld wrote elsewhere about Mahler, I have a pretty clear idea that "the choking fingers of the floating mind" is a phrase of deliberate Mahlerian resonance. Set in more positive terms and turning to Mahler's Symphony No. 3 is the composer's oft-quoted remark to the Finnish composer-hero Jan Sibelius that "a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything." 

Both extremes of description come through, though the net effect is positive, in the new Minnesota Orchestra recording of this work. The two-disc set concludes the Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä  traversal of the Mahler symphonies on the BIS label. Vänskä was Minnesota music director for 19 years, including a tortured period in which the board tried to reduce the orchestra to something like a gig ensemble.

Mahler wrestled with the idea of putting titles or scenarios on movements that would direct the listeners' attention to meanings he hoped to convey.  The problematic first movement, nearly 36 minutes long in this recording, was once "What the Forest Tells Me" and finally "Pan Awakes: Summer Comes Marching In."  Do we take joy in those recurring marches or should we feel anxious? Why give a military cast to the warm triumph of summer (the season that the otherwise performing Mahler devoted to composing)?

Mahler's mind certainly floats over the sylvan landscape in the movement Mahler marked with more direct expressiveness as "forceful and decisive."  A conductor must keep uppermost the unifying impact of that direction while allowing the profusion of details to have their say. The horns will be heard from magisterially, of course, as well as the stunning trombone solos. But subtle harp flourishes must come through, and percussion of such rarity and delicacy as the birch brush. The substantial first movement is so richly varied and almost exhausting in march-laden turmoil that I've rarely been so relieved for a recapitulation to make its appearance.  

The recording must be engineered to convey the variety the composer insists upon and the conductor gets the orchestra to respond to. That standard is met throughout here. I never feel the sense that technological clarity was allowed to put an extra glare upon any instrumental detail: there is no "siloing."  Mahler's floating mind alights on countless fine points of import and vividness, and this performance convinces us that the piece's unity remains in full view over the course of more than 100 minutes. 

Patience becomes the overriding emotional state as the work proceeds. It comes with a sung warning to learn from the depths of midnight. The setting of Nietsche's poetry commands acknowledgment of the transitory status of both joy and pain. In this performance, the portentousness of Jennifer Johnston's soprano is just the right thing; a soaring, merely beautiful soprano (like that of the late Jessye Norman in the Boston Symphony/Seiji Ozawa recording) does not seem quite right. (Acknowledgment should also be made here of the apt vocal contributions of the Minnesota Boychoir and the women of the Minnesota Chorale in the fifth movement.)

The finale, the next-longest movement, carries some of Mahler's most cautionary words about dynamics, tempo, and expression. "Breit," meaning "broad," comes and goes in the score here. Vänskä's interpretation thoroughly absorbs that directive. The listener is compelled to sink into the feeling that sustained broadening, even when sometimes quickened, can lend to a slow movement, especially when it is so well played. Rosenfeld's apparent use of Bruckner as a stick to beat Mahler with is put to rest with conviction: The floating mind finds rest, and its choking fingers release their grip. That mind indeed created a world, discovered anew by Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra.