The horns and brass pulled out all the stops, so to speak, to make a grand case of, in Mahler’s words, “a flaming indictment of the Creator.” The fourth movement was a genuine allegro furioso, recalling Dudamel’s insanely fast coda of the Beethoven Ninth last June.
The third movement, the ironically merry ‘hunter’s funeral procession’ (based on the Freier Jacques nursery song), where a coterie of forest animals that the dead hunter supposedly hunted escort his coffin to the grave and play weird music along the way, received an appropriate treatment now comically irreverent, now gloomily meditative. The second movement is a rustic hunting dance played with comically exaggerated rhythm and swagger the musicians were clearly having a good time with this one, as evidenced by the jaunty little oboe solo wafting over the strings in the middle trio section (kudos for the L.A. The balance between the strings and winds was ideal. The tempo, brisk and flowing, matched the cheerful mood. The first movement’s transition from slow, dark introduction to the bright morning song of the Fahrenden Gesellen lieder was magical. It’s always exciting to behold the eight horns leaping onto their feet to blare out the final, triumphant brass chorale, or the brilliant codas of the first and second movements (with the inevitable applause that followed, despite the bilingual PSA announcement to “hold your applause until the end” – apparently we need to a better job of community arts outreach to the adults not just to the school kids.) However, for me the best thing about last night’s performance were the finer details in Dudamel’s reading. Phil in 2009, but here performed with less bombast and more emotional depth (and more gray hair). It was the same work that inaugurated Dudamel’s first season with the L.A.
Phil played a thrilling Mahler Symphony No. On Saturday, October 8, the first week of its new season, the L.A.
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