Thomas Wilkins
Omaha Symphony
June 3, 2017
By Drew Neneman / World-Herald Correspondent
It was a summery 89 degrees in
downtown Omaha on Friday night, but inside the Holland Center at the
Omaha Symphony’s presentation of Gustav Mahler’s 9th Symphony, it was
98.6 and spectacularly human.
It
was the Omaha Symphony MasterWorks Series season finale, and the first
time the ensemble has tackled the work in more than 20 years. Thomas
Wilkins, music director of the symphony, conducted. Wilkins, though a
lover of Mahler, was conducting the 9th Symphony for the first time.
The
piece itself is timelessly approachable. Symphony goers and newcomers
alike will love the accessible melodies and exciting textures. With 98
musicians — 60 of them string players — the forces required to
accomplish this great masterwork numbered among the largest ensembles
the Omaha Symphony has ever had on one stage.
Classical
aficionados often regard late Romantic music, like that of Mahler’s
contemporaries, as being filled with thrilling and avant-garde thematic
material. These thematic passages are then bookended by comforting or
familiar cadences and resolutions.
In
Mahler, and particularly in the 9th Symphony, melodic passages ranging
from the haunted and vague to the familiar are instead supported by
endlessly surprising, sometimes serene twists instead of a resolution.
Wilkins remarked that this effect transforms what would normally be a
coda in the fourth movement of a symphony into a meditation.
“Here is a gift,” Wilkins elaborated, “and the gift is simply peace.”
The
ensemble showcased a tour de force among its artists as many soloists
were given opportunities to shine throughout the masterpiece. First
violin Susanna Perry Gilmore graced the evening with multiple, sumptuous
melodic entrances and elaborations on her violin. Thomas Kluge,
principal violist, and Paul Ledwon, principal cellist, also offered
stirring contributions.
Maria
Harding, principal flute, was particularly memorable and sensitive among
the woodwinds during the symphony’s first movement.
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