Orchestra sparkles in 'Das Lied'

What an extraordinary experience it must be for a young person to have practiced and perfected the playing of a beloved instrument, to have won hometown (or even home state) recognition as an accomplished soloist, and then to come to Charleston and team up with other brilliant young musicians as part of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.

On Thursday night, Emmanuel Villaume led this splendid, spirited group — which, let us not forget, didn't even exist three weeks ago — in what I would bet top dollar was most of the players' first-ever performance of Gustav Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde" ("The Song of the Earth").

Under such circumstances, the very lack of experience can be beneficial because it ensures that there will be nothing of the routine professional "gig" about the playing. On the contrary, here was a group of abundantly talented women and men, learning a challenging piece that was new to them, responding to each other's work, testing their limits and doing everything they could to make the most beautiful and bounteous performance possible, filling Galliard Municipal Auditorium with their efforts.

It was an evening that is certain to change some lives.

Were it not for its concluding movement, the vast, all-encompassing, half-hour "Der Abschied," it is doubtful that "Lied" would be better known than Mahler's several other song cycles. The earlier music is beautiful, no doubt about it, but no more so than what we find in "Songs of a Wayfarer" or the harrowing "Kindertotenlieder." But "Der Abschied" is an amazing creation — it is as long as all the other movements combined and as moving a farewell to life and living as Richard Strauss' "Four Last Songs."

Henri Louis de la Grange, Mahler's best biographer, has summed up this movement admirably: "It's as though a serene acceptance of fate were illuminated by a distant radiance coming from beyond. At the end of Mahler's short life, when his supreme mastery could make light of every formal problem and every constraint, his music attains a new level of quiet, contemplative lyricism.

"The material becomes rarefied as the voices are spaced out and hover in the ether, liberated from the laws of gravity and the normal constraints of counterpoint. In the final 'Farewell' of 'Das Lied von der Erde,' a breath of consolation and peace wafts over man as he longs to merge with the eternity of nature blossoming anew each spring."

Still, Mahler's mood when writing "Das Lied" in 1908 was far from "accepting." Under considerable pressure, he had left his position as director of the Vienna Opera (during his lifetime, Mahler was best known as a conductor). He was unhappily married, his beloved older daughter had just died of diphtheria and he had been told that he was suffering from heart disease.

"I've long known that I must die," he wrote to his friend and disciple Bruno Walter, who would ultimately conduct the world premiere of "Das Lied." "But all at once I have lost the serenity and confidence I'd acquired, and I find myself facing the void. Now, at the end of my life, I have to learn to stand and walk all over again like a beginner. After a gentle little stroll I'm filled with anxiety when I return, and my pulse beats so fast that it doesn't serve the purpose of making me forget my body."

Mahler immersed himself in Chinese poetry (and, indeed, in Chinese music, which he experienced through some early recordings) and began to work on a combination of the two genres he had pursued through the course of his career — the intimate song cycle and the gigantic symphony.

Yet, although he was clearly thinking in symphonic terms, he would not immediately call "Das Lied" a symphony. A deeply suspicious man, he realized that this would be his ninth symphony and that the number had meant death for Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak and Bruckner. It was only after "Das Lied" was complete, when he had supposedly eluded the supposed "curse of the Ninth," that Mahler began work on his proclaimed Symphony No. 9 - which did in fact turn out to be the last piece he concluded.

Villaume favored generally quick tempos, yet his interpretation never seemed forced and he elicited intricate and prismatic playing from his eager players. I was particularly impressed by the solo wind playing.

The soloists, tenor Russell Thomas and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, were mostly admirable. Thomas had the usual problems with Mahler's incredibly loud, high writing for tenor in the opening movement ("The Drinking Song of Earth's Misery") but most of this is the composer's fault, for the music comes very close to being unsingable, especially over the playing of a large orchestra. He was much more successful in softer passages, which were tender and full of character.

Cooke has a lovely, burnished voice with a distinctive dark timbre; moreover, she is a sensitive musician. My only complaint would be that she sounded almost too healthy in "Der Abschied." This is meant to be a languid, exhausted final utterance — the solo voice literally disappears into the orchestra as the music dies out — but Cooke sounded bright and alert to the end of the evening. One could easily have imagined her leaving Galliard and running a marathon.