MUSIC REVIEW : Mahler Fifth by Tilson Thomas

Assemble all the words denoting size, bulk, power, grandeur and the like, and you still might come out short of terms to describe the performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 as given by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas in the Pasadena Civic Auditorium Wednesday night. All this spaciousness did not necessarily make you love what you heard, but it was impossible not to be mightily impressed.

Mahler’s Fifth can cover a time span of anywhere from 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours, depending upon the conductor and his choice of tempos. Tilson Thomas’ tempos were generally moderate in the long run, though they encompassed every type of speed measurement in the process.

Yet this vast, virtually inhuman expanse was never for an instant under less than the most precise control by conductor and orchestra. The players performed with almost abstract exactness and precision, but there was never any suggestion of weariness or repetitious habit.

Mahler was never a practitioner of reticence. He emptied not only his heart and soul but also his farthest intellectual reaches in the Fifth. To susceptible listeners, he may have more than exhausted the possibilities. And he was never content with a simple economical statement. Every tiny idea had to be exhausted for size and meaning. Whether in this huge expanse he invariably maintained contact with his listeners is for each of them to say.

It is an oversized and overextended canvas and it defies any effective regulatory system. In view of all these challenges and hazards, Tilson Thomas made his musicians deliver a monumental performance. It was not always wrenching, but it was endlessly impressive. One might imagine an orchestra that gave a bit more luster to the free-flowing melodies and rhythms, yet it would be hard to imagine a more pure or compact statement, or one more concentrated in essence.

The London Symphony proved itself in the upper ranks in this performance and one would say that Tilson Thomas the erstwhile prodigy has ripened into full maturity. His performance elevated him to the front ranks of his art. Others might see some things differently, but Thomas’ way could never be violently argued.

The program opened with Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll.”