The OSO’s music director Carlos Kalmar has demonstrated an affinity for the music of Gustav Mahler throughout his tenure with the orchestra, usually opening or closing a season with a major work of the Austrian composer. This year, at his other gig, Kalmar began the home stretch of the season of the Grant Park Music Festival with Mahler’s sprawling Ninth Symphony. It went over very well with at least one Chicago critic (Andrew Patner):
From the first muted and rocking sounds of the opening Andante comodo (comfortably flowing) movement through the heartrending slipping away into the softest sounds of the closing Adagio, 80 minutes later, Kalmar demonstrated an understanding of this piece, and especially its structure, its pacing, and its inner pulse, that one normally associates with conductors with decades more experience than the 51-year-old Uruguayan-Austrian maestro. And the orchestra — in a work that demands lengthy passages of great cohesion and then turns to expose individual sections and players for minutes at a time — it is no left-handed compliment to say that it has not a weak link in it today. Throughout, the audience sat in rapt attention recognizing that we were observing, and even participating, in a psychological, emotional, and even philosophical journey as well as a musical and artistic one. Only more remarkable when one considers that this was the first time this piece was played by or at Grant Park.
Patner also talks about how this great performance came about, and much, if not all, of what he has to say is equally applicable to the Oregon Symphony:
You need of course an excellent orchestra and also an inspired one. You need a conductor with insight and authority who also holds the orchestra’s respect. For all of these factors we can thank Kalmar who has built and shaped this already fine ensemble into one that rivals many a major full-season symphony orchestra and who, without ego, tantrums, or stunts has won not only the respect but the love of his players. To have an audience — and an ever-growing one at that — made up entirely of people who wish to be there — no one attending out of social obligation — is a part of setting the mood and the aural tension. Add to this a sense of civic pride and accomplishment … and you have not only a recipe for something quite near miraculous but also something that exists nowhere else in the world.