There might be a more idiotic review out there, I just don't know where to look: http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-07-04/arts/seattle-symphony-orchestra-fights-bloated-mahler-symphony-to-something-better-than-a-draw.php Seattle Symphony Orchestra Fights Bloated Mahler Symphony to Something Better Than a Draw By Gavin Borchert <http://www.seattleweekly.com/authors/151273/> *To enjoy* the glories of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 in D Minor, you have to get past its hollow histrionics, its twee nostalgia, a boys' choir imitating bells, and the finale's saccharine piety and hopelessly inadequate climax. Just because it's Mahler's weakest, the Third makes an interesting test for a conductor, and I was eager to hear what Gerard Schwarz, whose season-ending Mahler performances with the Seattle Symphony are reliable triumphs, could make of it last week. He and the orchestra met the challenge and gave a compelling and memorable performance of this longest of all standard-repertory symphonies. In a way that feels more than a bit calculated, the composer inflated the 100-minute, six-movement piece with devices that had worked in his first two symphonies, but as his canvas grew more pretentious, his musical ideas got dumber: The innocent, folky tunes, some of which sound like they were fished out of Franz von Suppe's wastebasket, curdled into cuteness; the apocalyptic climaxes became empty noise; the epic length turned self-indulgent. (As if he realized this, Mahler next took a radically different path with his smaller-scaled, genial Fourth.) The music keeps interrupting itself, as though Mahler, half admitting that his ideas in themselves might not hold our attention, falls back again and again on the element of surprise. Schwarz relished these surprises, and played them up---making a sudden loudness an explosion out of near-silence, rendering the second movement's succession of contrasting dance episodes not just as tempo shifts but as cinematic jump-cuts. .... Janos Gereben/SF www.sfcv.org [log in to unmask] *********************************************** The CLASSICAL mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's HDMail High Deliverability Mailer for reliable, lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html