MUSIC REVIEW : Boulez in Maze of Mahler 9th

When one thinks of Gustav Mahler, one doesn’t automatically think of Pierre Boulez.

Mahler is indulgent in his passions. He is prone to extremes of dramatic agony and lyrical ecstasy. He is a prime exponent of heroic Angst , a protagonist of ethereal dreams, a poignant witness to the crisis of romanticism in decay.

Boulez, both as composer and conductor, tends to be cool. He savors analytical virtues, cultivates objectivity, stresses clarity and balance where others want to gild emotional lilies. He is, in the best sense, a modernist.

At first thought, the combination of Mahler and Boulez may seem unlikely, even perverse. But under the right conditions, the two actually can bring out the best in each other.

The conditions were emphatically right Saturday night at Royce Hall, UCLA, where Boulez led the Los Angeles Philharmonic through the daunting maze of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. The performance, installment No. 2 in the three-part Festival Boulez, offered numerous revelations.

Boulez’ attitude toward this music isn’t exactly idiomatic. There certainly are other ways to deal with Mahler’s sprawling valedictory.

The majestic Germanic conductors of the past did not shrink from the vast spatial, dynamic and expressive contrasts in the score. In their quest for superhuman impact, however, they ran the risk of exaggerating what arguably was already exaggerated.

Boulez allows no such risk. He limits the exposition to a mere--everything is relative--80 minutes. He refuses to stretch the line, overload the sentiment, thicken the texture or push the scale.

He obviously believes that Mahler’s emotional appeal needs no help from the conductor. In fact, he suggests that interpretive restraint can enhance the inherent pathos.

He suggested similar things, it should be remembered, when he created a sonic “Ring” in Bayreuth to complement the revolutionary staging of Patrice Chereau. Confounding the fears of Wagnerian traditionalists, he proved that fresh intellectual insights still could be illuminating, even in Valhalla.

Boulez’ Mahler is not shattering in the conventional sense. But it is intensely moving and valid on its own introspective terms. And it certainly isn’t vulgar.

Its impact is predicated on telling application of color and nuance, on impeccably gauged climaxes and delicately sustained tensions. Boulez’ perspective refuses to obscure the cumulative impact of the long, taut line.

One can be grateful, especially in the often overwrought churnings of the Ninth, that this conductor will not bludgeon with bombast. He focuses, wherever possible, on the calm rather than the storm.

He isolates the insistent wry humor in the folksy dance pattern of the second movement. He defines the repetitive grotesquerie of the following rondo with dry precision and finds catharsis in simplicity when nearing the final, reluctant cadence of the adagio.

He also makes the Los Angeles Philharmonic sound like a great, lean, virtuoso orchestra. It doesn’t always sound like that.

The Mahler Ninth requires no curtain raiser, no programmatic throat clearing. Nevertheless, Boulez opened the concert with some useful attention to historic miniatures of Webern.

First he demonstrated the elegant agitation of the still-romantic Passacaglia, Opus 1 (1908). Then he reveled in the harmonic daring, structural concentration and sheer sonic glitter of the Six Pieces for Orchestra, written in 1910--the same year as the Mahler Ninth.

The performance was a model of finesse. The juxtaposition was jolting.