Home >  A & E

Thursday, October 03, 2002

By Andrew Druckenbrod, Post-Gazette Classical Music Critic

The pulsating march that opens Mahler's Symphony No. 6 is as forbidding as they come. And if you listen to the work by drinking in this and other of its powerful expressions, they are bound to touch you emotionally over its hour-and-a-half length.

	Pittsburgh Symphony Mahler's Symphony No. 6 CONDUCTOR: Mariss Jansons. WHERE: Heinz Hall, Downtown. WHEN: 8 p.m. tomorrow; 2:30 p.m. Sunday. TICKETS: $19.25-$65.25. 412-392-4900.

But there is more than meets the ear. Classical music can be as narrative as a novel, with convincing stories to tell.Take Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, for instance. It arrests one's attention with driving music. But if you know that through the switching from C major to C minor, Beethoven is making a profound statement about the ultimate strength of the human spirit, the music takes on a new dimension.

Beethoven never said, but most theorists agree, that he viewed the minor mode as defeat for an imaginary protagonist and the major key as victory over life's trials, such as his own deafness. The human spirit triumphs in the first movement only to be undone by minor in the coda. Only in the work's finale does humanity prevail in a grand C major celebration.

It all works because Beethoven played off norms and traditions in the tonal music of his time, especially the conventions of sonata form.

Mahler also was attuned to the notion of music representing a struggle with life's adversity. Symphony No. 6 finds Mahler again exploring adversity as understood within the genderized context prevalent in Germany at the time. The poet Goethe's notion of "The Eternal Feminine" as the ideal of purity that can save a flawed but aggressive masculine figure had tremendous influence for Mahler.

In Symphony No. 6, the hero's departure for the great struggles of life is represented by an A-sminor military march. The protagonist must find A major to be redeemed. And, in fact, he briefly achieves A major as the piece transitions from the militaristic first theme. However, it quickly turns to minor, giving way to the "Alma Theme" in the form of a woodwind chorale.

Alma, his wife, is the redemptive space for Mahler, but the strange timbre of this chorale is suspicious, even with the more uplifting music that follows. But before audiences have time to think about it, the movement ends with a triumphal statement in A major.

So Alma has saved the hero? Unlike at the end of the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth, the protagonist has won? Perhaps not. The music of the movement's end smacks of a nervous, hollow victory. And, as it turns out, that is the case as the symphony ultimately ends quite tragically three movements later, never establishing major.

That's a lot to listen for in one performance, of course. You still can enjoy the symphony for its sonic journey, or you can arrive at Heinz Hall early, re-acquaint yourself with the program notes (always excellently written by Kenneth Meltzer). Or you can do both.

Either way, unlike Mahler's hero, you win.