The Oregon Symphony performance on Saturday, April 22nd at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall was the best concert that I have heard to date with David Danzmayr on the podium. Danzmayr masterfully led a program that featured Camilla Tilling singing Osvaldo Golijov’s “Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra” and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in which she sang the last movement. The Swedish soprano’s gorgeous voice and the orchestra’s superbly evocative playing made the concert an extra special, memorable event.
Tilling and the orchestra delivered the “Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra” with exquisite beauty that just makes a person realize how precious life is. The first song “Night of the Flying Horses” had lilting melody and a wistful ephemeral quality, because it started as a lullaby and ended in a fast gallop. Tilling’s plaintive, creamy soprano had an underlying vibrancy that heightened the poetry of the text. In the second song “Lúa descolorida” (“Moon, colorless”), based on a poem by Rosalia de Castro, Tilling and the orchestra created the sense of longing and yearning that was almost palpable. You didn’t even have to understand any of the words (all were in Gallego, a Spanish dialect), because Tilling got you to feel them. “How Slow the Wind” spun together two short poems by Emily Dickenson. One of the mesmerizing passages offered marimba and clarinet and another the basset horn, but Tilling’s voice elicited an elevated poignancy and her ability to delicately and effortlessly place high notes after long pauses was just stunning.
Before Mahler’s Fourth Symphony started, I noticed that the horns had been moved to the left side of the stage – in front of the percussion and just behind the (mostly) second violins. That looked like the first big adjustment that Danzmayr has so far. But the forces were enlarged with eight double basses, twelve violas, ten cellos, and twenty-seven violins. That made the sonic texture bigger, wider, deeper and wonderfully resonant.
When the orchestra began playing, you could hear the nuances of well-shaped phrases and dynamics that made the music thrive. The polished sound of principal horn Jeff Garza and his colleagues added to the sonic thrill. A sorrowful lament, expressed by the basses and lower strings in the third movement was absolutely heartfelt, and the orchestra excelled so much at creating the feeling of tension that one of the audience members near me began coughing and could not stop; so she had to leave. Tilling sang with stellar diction and expression in the fourth movement. Her voice filled the hall, but she never stressed it out. It was always perfectly matched to the text and the music, and she used almost no vibrato on her final words, which made them all the more heavenly.
With such an excellent performance, Danzmayr and the orchestra are really getting in sync. The Mahler gave listeners a rollercoaster ride that will not be forgotten for a long time
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