Yesterday the Northwest Mahler Festival Orchestra played its fourth annual summer concert in Meany Theater here in Seattle. Geoffrey Simon, now in his third year as principal conductor, performed the Strauss Rosenkavalier Suite and Mahler's Seventh Symphony.  Because I attended all the rehearsals and even played a minor part in the Strauss, I cannot claim even the remotest objectivity in my report.  Being able to participate in a musical event of such intensity is a joyous gift, and I know that the more than one hundred musicians in the orchestra would say the same.  Having made my disclaimer, I will begin with the Strauss.

When I was a young man, I stayed away from Richard Strauss with the greatest self-discipline, and especially Rosenkavalier, realizing that if I gave in to this alluring music, I would soon be corrupted beyond salvation.  Now that I am well past the age for corruption, I can joyfully succumb to its rosy seduction and revel in the sheer voluptuousness of it.  Geoffrey Simon made the most of this heady enchantment with a wonderful sense of Viennese rubato and flirtation -- the sort one hears in the work of Willi Boskovsky for example.  I thought the waltz passages were especially fine.   It requires a deft touch to achieve those slightly anticipated second beats and ineffably light third beats.  Simon managed to coax it out of our American amateurs even though most of us have never been within a thousand miles of Vienna.  The first platoon of horn players gave it their virile best with nobility, power, and accuracy.   Anna Velzo's lovely oboe solos went straight to the heart and conveyed just the right tinge of sweet innocence.  When I talked to her afterward I was astounded to learn that she was a high school junior -- about the right age to play Sophie.  The entire wind section was well prepared in depth, but I must also mention Mariel Bailey's elegant, (and now that we all know what it means, dare I say?) *schwungvoll* violin solos.

After the Strauss, while the next platoon of wind players came on, I hurried offstage to take a seat in the house since I was not playing in the Mahler.  I happened to sit next to a woman who still had tears in her eyes.  It turned out that she had spent a year studying in Vienna thirty years ago before entering medical school.  She told me that the music brought it all back to her, and that she had not heard that special, lilting inflection since she came back to the States.  I explained that Geoffrey Simon had simply taught it to us from scratch, so to speak.  I would not have believed it possible, but there it is.

The Mahler began with that ghostly, shivery sound that lets us know we are entering another world.  Simon insisted on clearly defined, measured 32nd note tremolos in the strings.  This produced an effect totally different from the usual buzz.  And then, out of nowhere, came the haunting sound of the tenor horn.  It made me think of something that might have come from a Bronze Age lur sounding out across the prehistoric peat bogs.  In fact it was Byron Sandborn playing an English-style, large bore, piston euphonium made by Wilson in Switzerland.  He had begun rehearsals with a slightly narrower bore German-style, rotary valve instrument which I liked very much.   Simon, however, preferred the Wilson, perhaps because it seemed to penetrate better.  In the end it felt just right.  (And yes, Joel -- the high c-sharps came through clean and clear!)  After the opening tenor horn statement, the first trumpet answer was keen as a razor thanks to Rick Presley, an Seattle Symphony trumpeter who volunteered to be a part of the festival orchestra.

I wish I could take you through the entire symphony, passage by passage, but I know it would bore you to death, and in fact you may well have quit reading by now.  There were a few places that were so fine that I feel that I have to mention them.  The sublime romantic bars after RH 14 (Mit grossem Schwung) gave Simon scope for another Straussian indulgence.  The fermatas were there, but not overdone; the overall rubato was exquisite, and the horns were enough to melt your heart.  Another great place was the trumpet play around RH 32 -- a passage that always reminds me of the Appell in M2.   The trumpet figures were played with utmost delicacy, and Simon handled the intervening Meno mosso bars with poignant restraint.  The whole movement pulsed with energy and never lost focus or momentum even in those quiet and ecstatic moments.

The second movement, Nachtmusik I, belonged to the magnificent horn section led by Deane Mathewson.  Everything worked perfectly to create a dream-like world --- the off-stage cow bells, the veiled, muted sounds, the curious, subterranean utterances from the contra-bassoon.  And close to the end there was that amazing duet with horn and clarinet!  What a nerve that man had in writing such a demanding passage!  It was all played with confidence and panache as though it were easy and only a dream.

I would guess that the scherzo is the most technically demanding of all the movements in this demanding symphony, and it is certainly the strangest.  I will quote David McBride, one of the heroic Mahler horn players who wrote: "The scherzo of the symphony had an atmosphere like a Dali-esque, drug induced opium trip gone very awry (which I think is the correct atmosphere for this BIZARRE piece of music)."

David understood it perfectly.  This movement always reminds me of paintings by Bosch, and bizarre is the only word that does justice to it.  When Simon did the M6 in Seattle last year, he revealed a special affinity for the outrageously expressionist passages in the scherzo and finale.  He drew out that aspect of the scherzo again this time, emphasizing the surreal and making the most of Mahler's juxtaposition of banal and high art.  Of particular interest to me was his use of the Viennese waltz lilt in certain passages such as RN 118 and elsewhere.  Having taught the effect to the orchestra, he felt confident in using it tellingly in this utterly transfigured context.   I had never heard this concept before, but it seemed to fit the hall-of-mirrors atmosphere that McBride so rightly calls bizarre.  Once again there was assertive, monster-under-the-bed characterization by contra-bassoonist, Tracy Bergemann.

Nachtmusik II was, in a way, another horn concerto, but nearly everybody had a chance to show off.  Simon kept everything under control with tongue-in-cheek humor -- as though the whole movement were a kind of parody -- a frustrated serenade in which the intended lady is perhaps only imaginary.   I wish I knew what Mahler really had in mind with his guitar and mandolin parts.  In this performance there were three players on a part, and the lines did not come through as they ought.  I kept wishing that the guitars had steel strings and the mandolin players had spent more time listening to David Grissman.  In the back of my mind I couldn't help wondering how much Mahler really knew about these atypical instruments.  When I tried playing through the guitar part, it was obvious to me that GM had never played the instrument.  (In fact there are a whole lot of strange things in this work that bring questions to my mind.   If only I had Mr. Monzo's exhaustive and detailed knowledge of the score, I might make more sense of it.  One of these days I will post a few of these concerns and see if anybody can enlighten me.)

For me, the finale of the seventh symphony has always been the sticking point.  For years I would play recordings of the symphony but omit the last movement.  It always seemed to me to be empty bombast, gonzo writing in which sheer decibels were used instead of ideas.  I have never been able to grasp the alleged allusions to Die Meistersinger or any of the other clever things that have been sighted in this movement.  To me it simply bears the telltale signs of a composer in a hurry.  Jerry Fox of the New York Mahler Society once tried to help me by suggesting that the movement was like a sound track for the Keystone Cops -- everybody scurrying about on some absurd and comical errand.  I confess that I still don't get it, but Simon gave the most plausible presentation that I have yet heard.  In keeping with his overall positive, upbeat approach, his way of saving the movement was to make it as light as possible even in the gonzo parts.  The task is formidable with at least six major tempi and transitions galore.  By the way, I tend to judge both conductors and composers by the way they handle joints, and Simon passed this appalling test with flying colors.  More than anything else, the one thing that made this movement work was Simon's emphasis of the coquettish aspect of passages such as the grazioso before RN 251.  That upswept figure with its crescendo followed by the subito piano made the movement seem more human somehow.  I may never feel comfortable with this movement, but at least Simon presented an insight that has given me food for thought.

And so the concert and festival ended as all must.  Geoffrey Simon's few days in Seattle have given us another huge charge of musical adrenaline and the courage to face next year's awesome challenge of Mahler's eighth.  It has been an inspiration to associate even briefly with so many dedicated people who seem blithely to attempt the impossible and against all odds to achieve it.

David Lamb in Seattle