For the second time in as many weeks, Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony and the S.F. Symphony Chorus are spending this week giving the Bay Area a sneak preview of their upcoming East Coast tour.
Wednesday at Davies Symphony Hall, Tilson Thomas conducted an all-Mahler program consisting of the composer's "Das klagende Lied" (Song of Lament) and the Adagio from Mahler's Symphony No. 10.
The program, which the Symphony will perform on Feb. 22 in Carnegie Hall, has its final repeat tonight at Davies.
For the first time since it was founded in 1972, the Symphony Chorus is touring with the orchestra. And, like last week's all-Stravinsky program, "Das klagende Lied" gives the chorus, under the direction of Vance George, ample opportunity to shine.
Shine they did in Wednesday's performance of Mahler's hour-long cantata, which features long stretches of writing for men's, women's and mixed choruses. In each configuration, the Grammy Award-winning 200-member chorus once again demonstrated its pre-eminence among Bay Area vocal ensembles.
Tilson Thomas led an energized reading, one that made clear just how committed the conductor is to Mahler's early score. Yet even this conductor can't compensate for the weaknesses in "Das klagende Lied." Despite flashes of the brilliance we associate with Mahler, this is still one of the composer's lesser efforts.
Mahler began the cantata when he was just 20, although it wasn't performed for another 20 years after it was completed -- even then, only Parts Two and Three of the three-part work were played. Part One ("Waldmarchen") didn't receive a performance until 1934, two decades after Mahler's death.
The source material -- a Cain-and-Abel story of fratricide and revenge, which is based on a grisly fairy tale ("The Singing Bone") taken from the Brothers Grimm -- was a dramatic choice. The mastery of the composer's mature works was still years in the future.
Tilson Thomas led a fervent performance, and the Chorus sang with robust power. But with one exception, the soloists didn't deliver the way one would have hoped.
The exception was mezzo-soprano Michelle de Young, who sang the part on the Symphony's 1997 "Das klagende Lied" recording, and who remains a model of velvety tone, articulate phrasing and clear projection.
The others didn't fare as well. Soprano Christine Goerke frequently struggled to find the musical line, and the role's high notes eluded her in more than one instance. Tenor Jon Villars lacked the vocal heft the assignment requires. Bass-baritone Clayton Brainerd produced muffled, imprecise sounds.
The concert's high point came before intermission, with the Adagio from Symphony No. 10. If "Das klagende Lied" represents Mahler the youth, the Adagio is among the composer's most seasoned late-life works. This fragment of the composer's final, unfinished symphony (in its 1964 version) was last conducted here by Tilson Thomas in 1996, and Wednesday's performance was a striking reminder of what the conductor is capable of accomplishing with it.
There was much to savor in the 30-minute performance; the wistful themes for strings, the dancing figures for woodwinds, the ghostly waltzes for violins were all in place. So, too, were the jolting final stretches of dissonance and the quiet moments that bring the movement to a beautifully transcendent close.
