Mahler Resurrected

Mahler-SYMPHONY #2 in C minor, "Resurrection": Talise Trevigne, Rihab Chaieb/Atlanta Symphony Chorus & Orchestra/Nathalie Stutzmann, cond. (June 6, 2026)

As the music of Gustav Mahler has gotten easier for even community orchestras to perform, a certain patina of routine has set into place. Performances of Mahler are now so commonplace that they have lost much of the 'event' status they held 50 or 60 years ago. In my experience of live Mahler, his "Resurrection" symphony has particularly suffered from overuse, to the point where the average rendition of his version of the Last Judgment has become as eventful as a trip to your mailbox.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached the Atlanta Symphony's season finale, especially after its stunningly underwhelming Beethoven Ninth last fall. Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann had been nonchalant with Beethoven and her Mahler was an unknown quantity to me.

I needn't have feared. Mlle. Stutzmann delivered and in spades. Hers was the most earth-shaking live-performance interpretation of the Mahler Second that I have experienced since James Levine at Ravinia in 1979. Since then, I've heard the Second done to death from Minneapolis to Las Vegas (twice in Sin City, if you can believe it), performances that made me despair of being moved by it ever again.

Stutzmann found all her answers in the score. Hers was a scrupulously faithful realization, in the truest sense of the word. And it was without any of the fussiness or pedanticism that are commonly associated with scrupulosity. Her tempi were justly chosen and always right on the money. Not only that, the interrelationship of those tempi was splendidly gauged, honoring Mahler's architecture. For instance, the "false climax" of the first movement, about two-thirds in, was not allowed to swamp the real peroration, as even the revered Klaus Tennstedt was guilty of doing. Speaking of perorations, the culminating pages of the finale were truly overwhelming and moving in Stutzmann's hands.

The second-movement Laendler drew applause, which slow movements never do. But that was understandable in the face of such crystalline counterpoint, graceful and evocative, with appropriate dollops of Austrian schamltz. Similarly, the weave of the scherzo bore one along so that the movement seemed over all too soon. One could say that of the entire performance, which carried the listener forward inexorably, even when Stutzmann observed the traditional long pause after the first movement. This practice may have a practical application as well as a dramatic one (a veteran Mahlerian says the opening frame of the symphony is brutal for the brass section, who need a good, long Luftpause to recoup).

Incidentally, Stutzmann split the violins left and right (not normal ASO practice) to best fulfill Mahler's contrapuntal exchanges. Quibbles were few, mainly an absence of truly soft playing, rarely less than piano even when Mahler wrote "ppp." One was reminded of Edo de Waart, who was rarely inclined to venture below a healthy mezzo-forte. (Then Valery Gergiev came to town and we realized that pianissimo wasn't a pipe dream.) In writing of a Leonard Bernstein Mahler Second, the learned Abram Chipman sighed that the first trumpeter didn't "have enough jazz of Jewishness in his soul." Same thing here. Too reticent.

Rihab Chaieb was recently seen in these parts as a cherishable Cherubino for Atlanta Opera. However, she was literally out of her depth in the contrapuntal profundities of "Urlicht," which emerged somewhat tremulously. Talise Trevigne was a fine soprano soloist and, whether singing softly or at full flood, the Atlanta Symphony Chorus was like one mighty breath, unified in purpose and sound.

In sum, Gustav Mahler is back in business. I am tempted to set Nathalie Stutzmann's affinity for Mahler alongside—reaching for my top shelf of praise—that of the "Celtic Furtwaengler," Wyn Morris. This is the kind of music making that deserves to preserved on record. Next season, Stutzmann is largely preoccupied by a retrospective of Brahms. Nothing against Gloomy Joe, but what's clearly needed is more Stutzmann Mahler—and soon.—David McKee