TACKLING MAHLER: Symphony a showcase opportunity

When the UNC School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra presents Gustav Mahler's massive Symphony No. 2 Saturday in the Stevens Center, the performance will recall a similarly ambitious effort in 2005. That's when the UNCSA orchestra took on Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.

Like the Ninth, Mahler's Second features a choral finale -- which on Saturday will be delivered by more than 125 singers. These will be drawn from the UNCSA Cantata Singers and the Parkland Magnet High School Choir. Other choristers will come from several UNC schools, including Winston-Salem State University, N.C. Central University, N.C. State University and Fayetteville State University. Soprano Jodi Burns and a mezzo-soprano Stacey Rishoi will solo.

John Mauceri, UNCSA's chancellor, will conduct the Mahler performance. He seemed confident that the 100 students of a typically large late-19th-century orchestra were up to the extraordinary challenge at hand, having heard several of them play Mahler's Symphony No. 1 two years ago.

That performance "inspired me to make this choice," he said. "I thought, ‘For those who played the Mahler First, what an incredible next step on their journey.' It seemed logical."

Mauceri also suggested that Mahler's Symphony No. 2, called "The Resurrection," was just the right piece to resurrect at this time. He said that the diversity of the chorus will showcase the state's cultural resources and sustain the concept of the UNC Festival of the Arts, a UNCSA-hosted event that was dropped last year because of budget problems.

"You know what an extraordinary state North Carolina is," Mauceri said. "I don't think we celebrate it enough."

Mauceri also said that Mahler's Second comes at a time when UNCSA and many other universities have had to contend with some of the most serious financial challenges in history.

"It's spring," he said. "This would be a time to celebrate not only survival but a triumphal survival."

Such a sentiment would be in keeping with the character of the second symphony, which Mahler composed between 1888 and 1894.

"(The symphony) dramatizes in music the struggle of man toward eternal salvation and immortality," press materials for Saturday's performance say.

The work begins with a stand-alone symphonic poem, called "Todtenfeier" or "Funeral Rites," which is meant to convey a search for the meaning of life. And it ends with a fifth-movement chorale finale, which "depicts the terror and glory of last judgment and resurrection, ending with hope for everlasting life and transcendent renewal."

Mauceri said that he, like others who conduct Mahler's symphonies, "feels at home" with them because they were composed by one of the leading conductors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mahler, an Austrian who lived from 1860 to 1911, wrote nine symphonies and started a 10th.

"The person who has written the notes is somebody who intimately understands the challenges and possibilities -- even though he stretches them -- of the very art of conducting," he said.

Mauceri will also be drawing on the insights gained from assisting Leonard Bernstein, the late superstar conductor who did much to revive interest in Mahler's symphonies during the 1960s and 1970s.

Mauceri called the Resurrection symphony "my entry point into the music of Mahler." This is something he has in common with Michael Dwinell, a college junior oboist who will play his first Mahler symphony on Saturday.

"I'm absolutely blown away by Mahler," Dwinell said. "When he created his symphonies … people asked, ‘What are we going to do with symphony?' Mahler decided you have to create an entire universe."

Dwinell likened performing Mahler's Second Symphony to "diving into a completely different universe of sound" and to "running an artistic marathon."

"There's not one moment of rest, as far as what you have to be doing artistically," he said. "The result is profoundly gratifying."

kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.
727-7337

John Mauceri will lead the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra's presentation of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in the Stevens Center, 405 W. Fourth St. Admission is $12, $10 for seniors and students. Visit www.uncsa.edu/performances or call 721-1945.

Note: The program will be repeated on April 25 at 3 p.m. as part of the Grand Opening Festival of the N.C. Museum of Art at the Museum Park Theatre in Raleigh.

The chorus will consist of singers drawn from Choral Society of Durham and the Duke University Chapel Choir. For more information, visit www.ncartmuseum.org/interim/grand-opening.php.