Smith closes Richmond career on triumphant note

Anumber of Gustav Mahler's contemporaries commented on how his Ninth Symphony was a classic purview of death, or at least deathly thoughts. Friday night at Second Baptist Church, conductor Mark Russell Smith and the Richmond Symphony Orchestra brought the magnificent piece to great life.

This being the final Masterworks concert series before Smith exits stage right as music director of the RSO after 10 seasons on the podium, the Minnesota-bound conductor brought forth obviously one of his favorites as he led a mostly full orchestra through the massive 1½-hour piece with no intermission.

Any of Mahler's works can be a big meatball to swallow unless you chew on them a bit. His Eighth Symphony was, to his dismay, subtitled "Symphony for a Thousand" as it actually required a chorus of 850 and an orchestra of more than 170 musicians. Obviously, one doesn't hear it performed often.

But the ninth -- devoted to instruments only -- is a masterpiece that gives each orchestral section a chance to shine.

One small problem, however: With basically a full brass section, in the first movement, trumpets and trombones shined a little too loudly, but not enough to overshadow the overall ambience of the full work.

Kudos to concertmaster Karen Johnson for her internal solo work, along with flutist Mary Boodell, clarinetist Ralph Skiano and oboist Gustav Highstein.

Smith dug everything there was to dig from the orchestra, particularly toward the end of the third movement, where he flew with some impossibly fast tempos that finished with a bang and everyone somehow together.

Most music historians refer to this symphony in morbid terms -- that it signifies death or dying. But if you listen closely, particularly in the second movement, it almost seems to be an homage to the then-popular waltzes of the Viennese period.

A definitive Mahler interpreter, Leonard Bernstein, perhaps captured the spirit of this work as a hint of redemption in his program notes from a 1965 recording with the New York Philharmonic:

"We are cleansed, when all is said and done; no person of sensibility can come away from the Ninth Symphony without being exhausted and purified. And that is the triumphant result of all this purgatory . . . we do ultimately encounter an apocalyptic radiance, a glimmer of what peace must be like."

Bernstein knew his Mahler, and so does Mark Russell Smith.

Bravo, Maestro Smith, and bon voyage.

Contact Walt Amacker at (804) 649-6247 or .