Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony conducted by Paavo Järvi
https://brunoserrou.blogspot.
Bruno Serrou
5 DÉCEMBRE 2025
Impressive Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and Zurich Sing-Akademie in an incandescent Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony conducted by Paavo JärviA short but intense evening at the Philharmonie de Paris was presented on Tuesday by the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and its music director, Paavo Järvi, featuring Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection." The Swiss orchestra has been assiduously performing Mahler's works for twenty years, recording two complete cycles of high-quality Mahler's works in the last ten years: the first with David Zinman, the second with the Estonian conductor, former music director of the Orchestre de Paris. The performance offered a vision of extreme contrasts, yet maintained an unwavering unity, with passages that were magnificently poetic and evocative, and others breathtaking in their tension and anguish. A sumptuous orchestra, across all sections, exalted brilliant, full-bodied, sensual sonorities, while the choir of the Zurich Sing-Akademie demonstrated striking unity. It was a pity they didn't appear to emerge from the ether upon their first entrance. The two soloists, mezzo-soprano Anna Lucia Richter and soprano Mari Eriksmoen, gave their all in the Urlicht (fourth movement) for the former, and in the latter, a truly embodied performance. Both illuminated the finale in a resurrection finally achieved.A marvelous ensemble, conducted with elegance and energy by its music director Paavo Järvi … a monographic program devoted to a single work, Gustav Mahler's most immediately accessible symphony, the grandiose Symphony No. 2 in C minor, "Resurrection," composed between 1888 and 1894 and premiered in two stages in Berlin in 1895: the first three movements on March 4, and the complete work on December 13.ontrasting and impressive, the symphony, the only piece on the program, was admirably performed by its artists. The title of this work resonated with the audience like a glimmer of hope in the heart of this autumn of 2025, dominated by gloom and anxiety. Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor begins with a monumental funeral march, taut as a tottering bow, in five sections entitled Totenfeier (Funeral Ceremony), which Mahler composed alongside his Symphony No. 1 "Titan" in 1888, and concludes in apotheosis with a luminous finale composed on a poem by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803), Auferstehung (Resurrection), which Mahler had heard in February 1894 during the funeral of his colleague and elder Hans von Bülow, founder of the Berlin Philharmonic, who died during a trip to Egypt, the two extreme sections being joined by three movements gradually opening onto the light. The heart of the score is the brief but sublime Urlicht (Original Light) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn), “O red rose: / Man is in the greatest misery, / Man is in the greatest suffering / Ah, how I would rather be in heaven!…”At the helm of the Zurich Orchestra with a fiery sound, whose homogeneity was immediately apparent from the very first bar, which could be described as disordered, with an opening Allegro maestoso of astonishing unity yet still allowing its nuances to show through, Paavo Järvi offered a reading of the Resurrection… With meticulous precision, keeping the tempos tight while maintaining a flexibility that allowed him to avoid pathos and overemphasis, he instilled in the work the energy of youth, but also the virulence, scope, dreamlike quality, and conquering brilliance that constitute its essence. In the Urlicht, the Rhenish mezzo-soprano Anna Lucia Richter imposed her profound singing with her velvety voice and superbly expressive nuanced range. The Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen, with her straightforward yet highly expressive voice, provided a luminous counterpoint in the finale, where the Zürcher Sing-Akademie (Zurich Singing Academy) Choir responded with gusto, even neglecting the pianississimo of its opening entrance, to the fiery but perfectly controlled conducting of the Estonian maestro, who magnified the plasticity of his orchestra, singularly balanced to the point of rendering perfectly intelligible the complexity of the polyphony and polyrhythms of the score entrusted to him.
Paavo Järvi, Anna Lucia Richter, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Photo : (c) Ondine Brtrand / Cheeese
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