Premonitions of tragic fate: ISO plays Mahler's Sixth as season draws to a close

Mahler in a characteristic mood of intense focus on his work

Gustav Mahler was well aware of the fragility of success  and simple happiness, and that apprehension had to find a place in his music. No more so was it brought forward and sustained than in his Symphony No. 6 in A minor, nicknamed "Tragic," accurately if not with the composer's authority.

The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra devoted its next-to-last concert in the current Classical Series solely to this work, which it will repeat at 5:30 p.m. today. Music director Jun Märkl clearly saw the difficulty of finding a suitable program partner for the piece, whose performance lasts some 80 minutes. Preparation according to his high standards presumably also accounts for the Sixth existing in splendid isolation this weekend at Hilbert Circle Theatre.

The score demands extraordinary forces, including eight horns (magnificent to see standing for the section-by-section curtain call at the end) and likewise thorough expansion beyond the standard repertoire's requirements. Massive sound is brought into play, of course, but always with a canny ear to balance, as well as to Mahler's dependable sensitivity to color and small-scale conversation among instruments.

On Friday night, I was particularly struck by the orchestra's sturdy mastery of the Scherzo, where "rhythmic dissension reigns from the beginning," in Michael Steinberg's pregnant phrase. The underlying orderliness of the score somehow came through, despite the orchestra's wholehearted commitment to the movement's variety under Märkl's insightful command. 

Mahler's Tyrolean summer retreat, where he composed

The music director sensibly weighed in on the better side of the composer's ambivalence about the order of the middle movements. When the Scherzo is placed second, it can be processed as withering, sardonic commentary on the complex determination of the first movement in setting the tragic mood. But in that order, there is a feeling of triathlon difficulty for both orchestra and audience. The Scherzo can still be felt as a response to "Allegro energico, ma non troppo" when it follows the balm of the second movement "Andante."

That first-movement heading roughly advises its performance to be fast and energetic, but not too much — as if to make it clear that there must be touches of solemnity about the music's energy. And respect must be paid to the seriousness of the contrasting theme by which the composer paid tribute to his love for Alma, his wife. Nothing tragic there, though Alma was wary of her husband's gift of tragic foresight. Indeed, tragedy would materialize for the family in 1907, the year after the Sixth was completed: a daughter's death, discovery of Mahler's heart disease, and his dismissal from the directorship of the Vienna Opera amounted to three hammer blows. 

Because of a horrendous traffic delay down Pennsylvania Street on the way to the parking garage, an hour after we'd left home we entered the theater's lobby as the Alma theme was soaring for the first time. I regretted, as one would always, not being seated from the first note onward. But the stalwart march of doomed heroism that opens the work was to come around again. So, guided to new seats by a helpful ISO usher, we were immediately caught up in the excellence of the performance that ensued.