So what do the musicians of the world-class Chicago Symphony Orchestra do in their spare time? Two of them spent it in Oak Park in a fortuitous pairing for the opening season concert of the Symphony of Oak Park-River Forest, conducted by Jay Friedman Oct. 22 at First United Church of Oak Park.
The previous Friday, Jay Friedman, principal trombone of the CSO for more than 40 years, was heard performing the soulful and jarring trombone soliloquies of Mahler’s Third Symphony at Orchestra Hall. On Sunday, he took his place on the podium in Oak Park for a program featuring Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Chris Martin, newly-appointed principal trumpet of the CSO, matched up with his colleague to open the concert with the dashing Concerto for Trumpet in F Minor, Opus 18 by Oskar Böhme.
The Oak Park performances by both musicians were a marathon in their own right, with the demands of a concerto, the high tessitura of a Handel aria with obbligato trumpet that followed, and the intense materials of Mahler’s Fourth, dwelling on heaven as the subject. Add to the musical intensity of this weekend the Chicago Marathon, running for the 29th year on Sunday morning. Among the finishers of the 26.2 mile race was trumpeter Chris Martin. Just five hours later, he glowed before the symphony audience, rattling off scales and double-tongue figurations as if he were simply, well, running in place.
The Böhme concerto is in the grand tradition of Romantic-era compositions, where the heart does not simply peek through the sleeve, but throbs right on top of it. Martin elegantly played the foreboding melodies of the first movement, well balanced with the orchestra, which contributed the appropriate drama in the stormy sections. He really stood out in the sequential solo passages, executed with pulsating momentum. The Adagio religioso – Allegretto second movement caught audience members by surprise; the program did not list individual movements, although the work was cast in a standard concerto pattern of fast-slow-fast. Here Martin was heard at his best in a wisely chosen majestic tempo allowing for the careful bloom of long phrases. The third movement, a jaunty romp in rondo form, showcased Martin’s assured and tireless virtuosity in cascades of dazzling runs.
Martin paired with Chicago coloratura soprano Elizabeth Norman for the time-honored favorite, “Let the Bright Seraphim,” from Handel’s oratorio Samson of 1743. Nelson ended this heroic aria with graceful melismas and ornaments while Friedman elicited a refreshingly buoyant baroque sound from the orchestra, reduced to upper strings, celli, and woodwinds. The text, speaking of angelic trumpets and celestial harps, was a perfect segue into Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, in which Nelson returned to sing “The Heavenly Life,” a favorite poem of Mahler’s from The Young Boy’s Magic Horn.
The attempt to contemplate heaven is a fated act, caught as we are in an earthly state and only able to imagine a world that is out of reach. The concept of heaven seemed to captivate Mahler. His entire Second Symphony is devoted to resurrection, his Third, no doubt fresh in Friedman’s mind, to the summing up of earthly life. The Fourth Symphony grew out of the Third, a treatise on the perfection and beauty of heaven.
Hearing these symphonies, one wonders if Mahler weren’t granted some supernatural glimpse into another realm. He calls on the orchestra to express utter repose and stillness in many slow passages, notably the opening plaintive lines of the third movement, marked “full of peace.” The celli recounted this passage warmly with successive gentle entrances by violas and second and first violins. The great stretches and sighs of the strings were pierced by exceptional work from the principal oboe, like a distant speck on the horizon gradually coming into focus. The principal horn, exposed in a passage of deep yearning, very effectively balanced the duet with acting concertmaster Elina Lev, whose solid playing was both glistening and aggressive, as needed. In typical Mahler scoring, the harp carried the orchestra substantially at times, closing the third movement with the hint of a sunrise in touching arpeggios.
Mahler wrestled head-on, trying to grasp the seemingly unattainable in his music, akin to finishing a marathon for most of us mere mortals. Yet even in quiet moments like the end of the Fourth Symphony, there is something about him that is totally energizing. OPRF audiences are among the lucky few with a resident orchestra that attempts to share that energy on a frequent basis. One hopes the orchestra will continue to take on the challenges of this Austrian master’s immortal music.