Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the TMC Orchestra in Mahler’s Third Symphony at Tanglewood, by Larry Wallach

Karen Cargill-sings with the TMCO and Michael Tilson Thomas. Photo Hilary Scott.

 

Saturday, July 17: Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Karen Cargill, alto
with the American Boychoir and the Women of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz and John Oliver, conductors.

The French philosophe Fontanelle famously asked “Sonate, que veux-tu?” in response to the new popularity of a purely instrumental form that asked that the audience do nothing more than sit and listen: “Sonata, what do you want from me?” Hearing Mahler’s extraordinary, gargantuan Third Symphony, one is tempted to repeat the question. What indeed is demanded from the listener by this veritable barrage, this unprecedented outpouring of the full spectra of sounds and noises, human emotional conditions, evocations of life forms from flowers to angels, plumbed philosophical depths, musical allusions encompassing inchoate mutterings, crude military assaults, the most naïve and artless melodies, state-of-the-art sophisticated harmonies, an off-stage post horn, a marriage of a poem by Nietzsche and German folk lyrics, a chorus of boys and women that sings for less than four out of the ninety minutes of the work, pre-echoes of Sousa marches and pop tunes (Sammy Fein’s “I’ll be seeing you…”; Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”; the Beatles “Yesterday”), deliberate references to Beethoven, Wagner, and for all I know, even Brahms? Judging from the enthusiasm of its response last Saturday night, whatever it was that the audience was actually imagining or experiencing provided it with a full measure of gratification. But the question remains, what was the composer after: “Mahler, que veux-tu?”

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller