Tag: Makiko Narumi

Above: Maestro Semyon Bychkov

Author: Oberon

Sunday October 28th, 2019 matinee – Attending a performance of the Mahler 2nd invariably fills me with memories of past performances of the work that I have experienced. By far the most meaningful of these came at Carnegie Hall in December 2001 when my late friend Makiko Narumi sang the solo alto part in a performance by the Juilliard Orchestra. She was suffering from a rare form of cancer, but heroically she sang…and moved everyone to tears with her “Urlicht“. She left Carnegie Hall in a wheelchair that night, and never sang in public again. She flew to Japan in March 2002 to seek treatment there, but she died at her parents’ home in Aomori within a month.

This afternoon, back at Carnegie, the great conductor Semyon Bychkov led the Czech Philharmonic in a rendering of this Mahler masterpiece that was not quite the soul-stirring experience I had been anticipating; the reasons for this were mainly extra-musical.

The conductor’s pacing of the work was flawless, and there were long paragraphs of superbly layered sound from the orchestra. The symphony’s epic climaxes and their ensuing ebbing away were impeccably judged by the Maestro. The courtly opening of the second movement, and the ‘Halloween’ dance of the third reminded me yet again of what a great work the Mahler 2nd truly is. Full-bodied strings and expert solo woodwind playing gave a great deal of pleasure, and the chorus played their part in the proceedings to wonderful effect.

These positive elements were somewhat offset by some fluffed brass playing, and by vocal soloists who were more serviceable than inspiring. Mezzo-Soprano Elisabeth Kulman sounded lovely in the very quiet start of the Urlicht; later, a trace of flatness crept in, and the concluding rising phrase of the song seemed a bit unsupported. She sounded fine, though, in the later O glaube! Soprano Christiane Karg’s upper notes were somewhat tremulous, though overall her sound is appealing.

But it was a series of noises in the hall that eventually took on a comic aspect – due to their frequency and timing – which made concentrating on the music next to impossible. It started during a dead silence midway thru the symphony’s opening Allegro maestoso; and it happened again during the Andante moderato. Then, just as Ms. Kulman was starting the Urlicht, there was a loud thud. And something else was dropped during an offstage brass passage.

In the final movement, everything at last seemed to be going smoothly – aside from some wonky brass notes and yet another dropped item – until the chorus made their hushed entrance. Here, atmosphere is everything. But the sound of a door closing somewhere ruined it.

When so many earth-bound distractions occur in the course of a single symphony, one feels battered down. My high expectations for this concert were slowly frittered away as the afternoon wore on. 

Considering my abiding love for the Mahler 2nd, this is not at all the type of article I thought I’d be writing this evening. But an accumulation of ordinary annoyances – there were others that I haven’t mentioned – got the upper hand today.

NOTE: Ben Weaver writes about the Czech Philharmonic’s opening performance at Carnegie Hall, which took place on Saturday evening, October 27th, here. Ben was with me at the Mahler matinee, and said that the blips in the brass playing on Sunday were nowhere evident in the Dvořák program. He felt in general that the orchestra players might have been experiencing some fatigue on Sunday afternoon following a big program on Saturday night. He also said that the Dvořák program was free of audience distractions and extraneous noises.