Mahler: Symphony No. 9

Chronique

Osmo Vänskä has been the music director of the Minnesota Orchestra since 2003, and his cycle of Mahler symphonies has made an ideal showcase for the work he has done with the group. Striking examples may be heard throughout the cycle, and he has had ideal collaborators in the BIS label's engineers, who by this time have truly settled into the Minneapolis Orchestra Hall. Vänskä's extremely low dynamic levels in quiet passages sound like a million bucks here. His tempos are about average among the wide variations conductors have applied to this work, and there is an attractive sense of momentum even in the giant finale. Issues arise with the overall flavor of the interpretation. If one thinks of Mahler readings along a spectrum with the hyper-emotionalism of Leonard Bernstein at one end, Vänskä would be at the other here. Sample the Rondo-Burleske third movement, which has little of the burlesque in its straightforward expression; the Mahlerian sense of minatory venom is almost completely absent. Then again, some listeners may prefer to find this for themselves rather than having it added by a conductor, and if the symphony does not seem death-haunted here, it can also be argued that Mahler wasn't planning on dying and completed a good chunk of another symphony after this one. In the end, it is a matter of preference, and there is no doubt that Vänskä and his musicians do themselves proud here.

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