WA Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor Asher Fisch staged a triumphant return to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at Winthrop Hall on Friday, a tour de force 12 years in the making.
Distant horns, harp and stealthy strings intimated aspiration as woodwind chimed in to the opening Andante movement. Timpani (Alex Timcke) flagged an ominous mood swing, drawing in brass to bolster impact, the multiple parts moving independently yet united by Fisch’s constant baton.
Artists and audience alike settled into the steady stream of symphonic sound, each engaged in the moment.
Mahler wrote but never heard this composition, the spectre of death ever-present in fateful drumbeats and softly menacing undertones of woodwind and brass.
WASO last played the work in Fisch’s first season, when the audacity alone was worth the ticket. Now the assurance of the ensemble, typified by David Evans’ exquisite horn, Liz Chee’s poignant oboe and the confident ebb and flow of tone and dynamics, was compelling.
Salient entries from flute (Andrew Nicholson) and trumpet (Jenna Smith) stirred the orchestra to fresh endeavour, the fatalistic theme rising then falling away to trombones and timpani with funereal chimes pointing the way to a burgeoning crisis before cool reflection in solo violin (Riley Skevington).
Woodwind then settled the mood for a featherlight cadence from piccolo (Sonia Croucher).
Mahler’s rhythm of life and mortality — slow, quick, quick, slow — surfaced in the second stanza. Bassoon (Jane Kircher-Lindner) then florid horns led out a rustic Laendler dance measure, spilling to a crazy cacophony of strings punctuated by brass and timpani, underpinned by woodwind.
Individual voices asserted their character before ceding to the next in a kaleidoscope of colour and emotion, their diverse talents pulling towards the same end, closing again in piccolo.
Brass announced the Rondo-burleske third movement, a flurry of fragments and phrases coalescing around tempo.
Clarity of technique was constant as the spotlight fell in turn on sections and soloists, landing on brass with Smith’s stratospheric trumpet tolling out the eternal theme, throwing to strings and heroic horn highlights.
The full heft of Mahler’s vision gradually emerged; first in still, small voices — the sound of silence — and then full orchestra as an urgent, stirring cadence set the scene for the “music from beyond” in the Adagio finale; a steady, solemn proclamation, panoramic in scope.
Now the voices all rhymed as Evans’ horn took up the theme in bold, dogmatic tones. Violins channelled harmonics as cellos and double-basses anchored the soundscape in mystery.
Skevington again led from the front, summoning horn then tutti strings. Brass and woodwind swelled the strain then fell away to whispered strings.
Cor anglais (Jonathan Ryan), oboe and clarinet (Allan Meyer) held the stage to trigger a resurgence laced with horns and percussion, fading at last to piccolo over silken strings; sighing on a dying breeze to close.