Perhaps never has the battle between life and death been waged more musically and effectively so than in Mahler's Titan Symphony, his first, and particularly here in the third movement. A funereal march begins dirge-like in the drums, and the familiar strains of Frère Jacques are picked up scratchily between the strings, mocked by the bassoons in a round and set in a disconcerting minor key. Like an embattled ray of sunshine, however, a little boy meets the march in a merry martial tune at 1:21, our friend the oboe singing his little sailor song head on against the march. Mahler, like most of the Romantics and post-Romantics, relied heavily on his cultural roots and folk traditions to make his sweeping melodic gestures and here, at 2:47, a Klezmer band meets the march, and then at 3:14, another! A minor skirmish, a happy battle of Jewish folk tunes ensues, lushly in the strings, giddy in the oom-pah-pah drums. But while Death may have taken a holiday, it infects the melodic lines and all turns minor. A lovely lilting Viennese tune breaks out at 6:00; life wants to live of course, and we are swept up in the now, savoring the time signature, living in the moment. Always lurking is Jacques, though, the sad sleeping brother, who brings the movement to a solemn sober conclusion.
This performance is crisp and fine under the precise baton and hawk-like eye of Christoph Eschenbach.
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