Blog

Gustav Mahler was a guy who thought big.

His symphonies are massive affairs, demanding in their scope, girth and length, often pushing performers and audiences to the brink. But when stripped of all the immense orchestration, the great Austrian composer and conductor reveals himself as an intimate artist whose ideas appear, well, bare boned.

This approach is part of The Florida Orchestra’s latest Soundwaves Chamber Orchestra series, which offers a chamber-size version of Mahler’s otherwise hefty Symphony No. 1.

“The score is bar-for-bar the original Mahler, but some musicians take over other parts,’’ says TFO Resident Conductor Chelsa Gallo, who leads the group in performances Sept. 24-26 in Clearwater, St. Petersburg and Tampa. “There’s an honesty to the size. What this arrangement creates is an intimate view of the musicians as they take these parts on − and are quite exposed in doing so.’’

Gallo chose an arrangement by Iain Farrington, a British musician who specializes in score reductions. Where a typical performance of Mahler’s symphony can demand a stage full of musicians, Farrington’s slim-and-trim rethinking calls for just 21: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, a pair of violins, viola, cello, double bass, harp, timpani and percussion.

But does such musical liposuction add anything to the listener experience? Gallo believes it does, if at least by encouraging us to step inside the music to hear it differently – as if for the first time.

“To me, Mahler is the ultimate chamber composer,’’ she says. “Yes, the symphonies require 100 or more musicians, but we all know that sound: Before the earth erupts, there’s just one bird. Before the hero comes charging out of death, there’s just one voice calling him from the depths.’’

Technically, playing a reduced version of a large symphony is less a challenge than the mindset of the musicians, Gallo added, because each person is essentially a soloist in the spotlight.

“The biggest difference is the player psychology,’’ she said. “This type of intimate play is a psychological task as much as an artistic one.’’

TFO took a similar approach last year in a performance of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony with just a dozen players. The single instrument per part created a lucid transparency in what otherwise would be the work’s dense, organ-like textures.

Violinist Sarah Shellman said with so few players on deck, any mistake stands out: “As far as challenges go, paring down instrumentation makes playing in tune tough. There are fewer people to blend with, and pitch variations are much more apparent.

“On the flip side,’’ she adds, “there’s always a clarity to the voicing when playing in pared-down ensembles. There’s no wash of sound to cover up the leading instruments.’’

Also on this week’s program are Ayanna Witter-Johnson’s Blush for Chamber Orchestra, which the composer says conveys “the ups and downs of young love;” and Mason Bates’ The Rise of Exotic Computing, a sinfonietta inspired by the notion of synthetic or exotic computing.

“These three composers shifted music away from where things were and are,’’ Gallo added. “Mahler made symphonies bigger and longer but he brought an otherworldly intensity of emotion. Ayanna emphasizes the diversity of human experience. And Bates challenges us to find softness in a topic most of us find cold and unfeeling.’’