Last night’s sequen­tial Mahler cycle started not only with the Sym­phony No. 1 but with his Kinder­toten­lieder, sung by Thomas Quasthoff. It was sur­pris­ingly flat — Quasthoff sang with sur­pris­ing empha­sis and vehe­mence, which I think is a wrong choice in this music, which is best per­formed with under­state­ment. The poetry itself only refers to the tragedies through allu­sion and metaphor, and the work is about bear­ing the unbear­able by cir­cum­scrib­ing it. Also, singer and con­duc­tor did not always seem to agree on how things should go.

The orches­tra played beau­ti­fully. This is a very spe­cial ensem­ble, with what the imag­i­na­tion says is a clas­sic mittle-European sound; throaty winds, brass fresh off the parade ground, dark horn tone, woody string sound. There’s not many ensem­bles like this left, if any, after the long process of homog­e­niza­tion of orches­tral sound that record­ings have wrought. It’s not just their sound, they play with great skill and expres­sion, and can get nice and loud!

The First Sym­phony was excel­lent. In the pro­gram notes, Baren­boim writes about the lost art of por­ta­mento and how essen­tial it is to Mahler. It’s an impor­tant detail in his straight­for­ward approach — he applied it dra­mat­i­cally in the Trio sec­tion of the sec­ond move­ment and all of a sud­den the music made sense in a new way, as both a mock­ery and embrace of the clas­sic Vien­nese waltz. That’s Mahler, cruel and lov­ing at the same time. The bass solo open­ing the third move­ment as as good as can be, and the finale was played with both great power and con­trol. Extremely long ova­tion, and deserved.

Tonight, the Sec­ond “Res­ur­rec­tion” Sym­phony, con­ducted by Boulez.