Review of VSO concert pairing Gershwin and Mahler

Guest review by Joshua Lickteig

 In the second concert (November 1) of their 47th season, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) delighted its audience with works by George Gershwin (1898-1937) and Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) in an impassioned mix of iconic jazz-classical and epic late romanticism.

In a pre-show talk, maestro Salvador Brotons accentuated a perspective of working holistically in preparation with a musical piece as distinct from its substance, particularly in rehearsal the week before; the significance of playing long passages from beginning to end without stop or critique. “We must detect what is needed to make the performance better,” Brotons said with palpable showtime excitement.

The 1,150 seat auditorium of Skyview Concert Hall on NW 139th Street last Saturday, an eve after Halloween, was nearly full. Joined by Warren Black of All Classical Radio, VSO’s planned giving consultant Hal Abrams spoke on the continued impact of local philanthropy and offered guidance on making end-of-year donations. Before the north-facing stage a patron’s autumn bouquet blushed with mute pinks and warm beige of garden rose, gentle yellow chrysanthemum and orange hydrangea.

To this day it remains unknown exactly how Gershwin in 1924 played Rhapsody in Blue (commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman and written in just over five weeks), at the time considered an experiment in modern music. Modeled somewhat after Liszt’s Rhapsodies and lightly informed by Dvořák’s Humoresques, its free fantasy strides and bold episodic changes bring ready space for the expressive and devotional digitation of internationally acclaimed featured soloist Marc-André Hamelin.

Glancing once from the corner of the east wing, vanishing for a moment, then moving across the stage, the pianist and Brotons share a wave of thought and before an instant passes we are glidingly carried by clarinet into the ritornello theme, through the foundry of its famous four note motif, then animation by the brass, then romp of full ensemble and keys. Hamelin’s earnestness and expert discernment with phrasing prompts us to listen with our ears as open as possible, while encouraging: Hear this with me, laugh with me, dance with me. 

The companionship of the orchestra evident. As they play there is a familiar accumulation of wonder into expansiveness, and an adaptive modularity beyond the formalistic stitch-work of melodic ideas. They are serious and joyful in the responsibility of channeling the essence of the work, its ragtime predecessors, foresight in international music, and overall synchrony in blending of musical traditions.

Hamelin is a pianist who also composes and enjoys writing for others. This concert took place the day after the release of Found Objects / Sound Objects, his 92nd album (65th with the niche label Hyperion), marked by the first recording of his deeply chromatic 2023 composition Hexen Sabbath, amidst an all mixed up higgledy-piggledy bag of other twentieth and twenty-first century tricks. Hamelin in interview with KQAC 89.9FM’s THURSDAYS @ THREE shared a preview of the weekend’s concert including his “student piece” called Music Box (www.allclassical.org/programs/program-archive — 10/30/2025).

Extending a bravura performance and lively ovation, Hamelin returned to the piano bench and with light Russian intonation, said “This is Rachmaninoff.” He commenced then to play Études-Tableaux, Op. 39, bringing us progressively toward finer and finer levels of detail and the many notes compounding inside the Steinway.

At intermission complimentary treats were offered and merchandise for sale included VSO pins, winter hats, tote bags and live recordings of Brotons’ work (I chose a CD of Symphony No 5 “Mundus Noster” / Oboe Concerto performed by Balearic Islands Symphony Orchestra, 2013).

“Are you ready to listen to one of the most incredible symphonies ever written?” – The conductor reeled us onward to the finale of the night and into ‘Schleppend, Wie Ein Naturlaut,’ the amorphous first movement of Mahler’s No. 1 in D Major. A flop in its Budapest premiere in 1889, the origin of the work precedes Gershwin’s piece by about forty years; it was revivified by Leonard Bernstein in the 1960’s.

The interpretation the orchestra brings forth is technically audacious though highly controlled in the primordial and darkly Dionysian terrain of the piece, articulate and playful in folk-inspired sections and ironic intuitions of the cuckoo’s calls.

Through the natural to the unreal to the funereal, the riveting individual section work of strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussion at times offered treats, others perhaps tricks, leaving listeners deciding which is which. In each case, and remarkably the brood and shadow of third movement Ohne Zu Schleppen’s double-bass solo, all befitted the sophisticated acoustics of the auditorium. The expanded brass of seven french horns achieved a massive depth.

In the fourth and closing movement, Stürmisch bewegt, Brotons’ aerobicism sprouts at one moment from grief, the next from joy. There is eventually transcendence in an exultant upheaval through the conductor’s command, what he reasoned earlier about Mahler in the talk as “passion but with a very clear head.” Eminently, in one of the first brief suspensions of the final moments of the piece could be heard a single triumphant stomp of the foot.

Once to a friend Mahler is known to have mentioned, after completion of the work, that it was as if the music had poured from the heart like a mountain stream. In its entirety, the program brought effulgence to Vancouver on a rainy Saturday evening, a performance less of an exhibition, more an offering. There were many a spiritful “. . Bravo!”

“And if you like it, maybe next year we’ll do the 2nd [symphony],” Brotons had said earlier. Unanimously, it seemed, everybody did.

Joshua D. Lickteig is an artist and engineer born near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His latest books are Half Moon Day Sun (2021) and Ten Control Mills (2015), some poems from which appeared in Don Russell’s plays Dreams of Drowning (2022) and iTopia (2016). He lives in Portland, Oregon, and is an ongoing contributor to the Concordia News.