Mahler illuminated by Mäkelä’s two-ended candlelight in Cleveland

United States Mahler: Jennifer Johnston (mezzo-soprano), Cleveland Orchestra Chorus (director: Lisa Wong), Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus (director: Jennifer Rozsa), Cleveland Orchestra / Klaus Mäkelä (conductor). Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Cleveland, 17.10.2024. (MSJ)

Mahler – Symphony No.3 in D minor

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –
It gives a lovely light!

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Mahler that risks nothing is not worth hearing. Mahler that risks everything will almost certainly fall apart in performance and fail to deliver the composer’s insights. So, where is the right level of risk to be found? And does it extend beyond the stage?

There is no question that Klaus Mäkelä’s reading of Mahler’s Symphony No.3 with the Cleveland Orchestra on this occasion was visceral and richly detailed, capturing both a sense of wonder and a joy in Mahler’s endless invention. If I sound a note of caution about how this young conductor appears to be visiting everywhere, conducting everything, even as he gears up to take over not one but two major orchestras (the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), it is because it was a good performance. I would like him to be able to deliver good or even better performances far into the future.

Mäkelä has, of course, suffered backlash from media overexposure, and from failure to live up to the publicity-machine hype that has accelerated his fame like gasoline on a campfire. Why anyone would believe hype in the first place and then act wounded in response is beyond me, but Mäkelä continues to deliver worthwhile performances on his visits to Cleveland despite the backbiters. I hope to see his talent survive and grow into the kind of masterful grasp that only comes to a conductor with time and experience. He has enormous potential to become a great conductor, but he could also go the course of ‘First Fig’, the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem quoted above, if he doesn’t pace himself.

But to be sure, the light was lovely and bright! Mäkelä threw himself with vigor into every phrase, every transition, clearly in love with the music and determined to stretch its emotional bounds in all directions. The opening fanfare in the first movement was delivered with heroic heft by the expanded Cleveland horn section, and the following slow march coalesced trenchantly, with details and rhythms etched and sprung. Brian Wendel’s epic trombone solos were delivered with great beauty, the player not electing to push the solos to the very edge of his tone as some do. The endless giddy marches that Mahler used to represent summer marching in were delivered with flair, Mäkelä keenly attuned to the sudden volatility that keeps the music just this side of cloying. He rightly found the key to the long movement in the panic of the interrupting climaxes, pre-echoes of the big climax yet-to-come in the finale. First associate concertmaster Liyuan Xie’s numerous violin solos in the first movement and elsewhere were lucid and sweet.

The second movement minuet was full of charming dashes of color, particularly from principal oboe Frank Rosenwein, though there were moments when some background material could have been slightly more prominent. That is an issue for a conductor with a string-instrument background: Mäkelä’s default is to pay attention to the strings, when there are times that he could give a little more attention to the rest of the orchestra. The good thing is that he is showing signs of getting better at looking beyond the strings, and he most certainly does secure rich and expressive music from the Cleveland strings, who can play with rich sheen when asked to do so. The following scherzo was lively without being rushed. The just-barely offstage ‘posthorn’ solo in the trio would have been more evocative at a greater distance but was certainly done with poise and beauty of tone.

I was worried at the beginning of the fourth movement, a setting of the ‘Midnight Song’ from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra, for Mäkelä’s tempo started off quite slowly which can cause momentum problems. But it was a bit of shrewd shaping on the conductor’s part, conveying the solemnity of the setting with a great stillness. Once the movement got underway, it flowed effectively. It was an example of why Mäkelä is good – he has developed an ability to shape passages with a shrewd flexibility of tempo that never veers to exaggeration. Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston was a treat, bringing a lustrous voice with both depth of tone and the ability to soar out over the orchestra, even though she was stationed within it instead of at the front of the stage. I also appreciate the risk that was taken in attempting to realize Mahler’s ‘drawn up’ indication for the waterbird cries imitated by the oboe and English horn in this movement. It becomes an angular phrase on the cor anglais which some may dislike, but it conveys the idea of a bird call reasonably well enough. The other option – other than ignoring it completely – is to do what Benjamin Zander and the Philharmonia Orchestra did when they recorded it. They used an extra cor anglais with modeling clay inserted into one of keyholes to make it possible to glissando upward as the oboe can.

The choruses, which came onstage after the first movement, brought a fresh and perky warmth in the fifth movement, agile and alive. Mäkelä kept them standing until the first large climax of the finale, allowing the softly sonorous strings to emerge from the silence following the voices, another magical moment of many. Perfectly paced, the final movement ebbed and flowed, warm and lustrous, the winds and brass finally joining for a radiant, unforced apotheosis. During the numerous curtain calls that followed, the conductor made a small but important gesture, patting the score on his stand with affection with every bow.

Perhaps the best summary came from my friend, who was experiencing the piece as his first full Mahler symphony ever, live in this concert. He turned to me during the final applause and said, ‘Wow, just wow. I kind of think my [expletive deleted] mind is blown!’ He said later that he particularly appreciated what seemed like an endless series of breathtaking moments, one after another.

In the end, the occasion, the piece, the players and singers, the conductor and the attentive audience were a gift. I look at it this way: my father was a steelworker in the industrial Midwest of the US. My grandfathers were miners in Appalachia, and their parents before them were farmers, lumbermen and miners. That a working-class kid like me could educate myself to the point that I can walk into a palace of art such as Severance Music Center and hear some of the greatest musicians in the world play one of the greatest creations of a human mind is a stunning gift.

How precious this magic is. We must work hard to protect and promote its illuminating flame, just preferably from one end of the candle at a time.

Mark Sebastian Jordan