Trombones

Symphony No. 8; Gustav Mahler, composer; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; Sir Simon Rattle, conducting

Only two days after hearing the fantastically named Eldar Nebolsin – that’s right, I’m going to say it again – Eldar Nebolsin play a recital at the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest, I heard the Minnesota Orchestra storm its way through Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Conductor David Zinman had mustered the forces necessary for the performance of Herr Mahler’s amalgamation of cantata, symphony and opera, aptly nicknamed “The Symphony of a Thousand”.

I don’t know if they had gathered one thousand performers to ante up the extravagance; I doubt it. I don’t think the stage could have stood the weight. But some performances of the piece since the premiere of it on September 12, 1910, have, indeed, called upon the talents of one thousand musicians.

It reminds me of the time in 1995 when the Pride of the Dakotas Marching Band gave their end of the season concert in Frost Arena. They wanted to play Meredith Wilson’s “Seventy-Six Trombones” with seventy-six trombones lined up in front. The band itself didn’t have that many trombones, so the call was put to the community: If you’re coming to the Pride concert and you play the trombone, bring your ax. (By the way, “ax” is musicianese for musical instrument. I don’t know how it got started. While sufficiently funny, I guess, we all could have gotten much more bang for our buck if we would have said “chain saw”. As a matter of fact, that’s what I’m going to say from now on. Chain saw. Let the word be spread throughout the land, if you want to play in my band, bring your chain saw.) When I took Mom and Dad to the concert, I saw more than a bunch of people in the parking lot swagger out of their cars – trombone players swagger – open up their trunks, take out their chain s… trombone cases and head into the arena.

Trombone caregivers met them at the door. “What part do you think you can play; trombone one, two or three?” “Nope, no rehearsal. When it’s time to play, come on down. Hopefully the virtuosos outnumber the hacks.” “What? No, you don’t get paid. Trombone players never get paid. Get outta’ here.”

They had seventy-eight trombones. The directors had intended to cut it off at seventy-six. But they only would have cut two players, and that would have been embarrassing for everybody. And besides, who’s going to count? Well, the answer to that is “everybody”. That’s okay. If you start with two fish and five loaves and end up with two extra trombone players, well, when they start dividing up the leftovers, somebody's going home with two trombone players.

Symphonies typically get divided up into three or four parts. Not here, though. Herr Mahler kept it to a simple two. The first part lasts about twenty-eight minutes. The second part lasts about forty-five minutes. Yeah, “woof” is right. The entire work expresses a single idea: redemption through the power of love. The first part does so using Biblical and liturgical text. The second part uses the secular text from the closing passages of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s dramatic poem of “Faust”.

I really wasn’t interested in the text very much. I just wanted to hear beautiful music, and THAT the performers on the stage had to offer in abundance. We even broke the cardinal rule of concert-going. We clapped between the two parts. And, you know what? They bowed.

Credits: To the Makita Company, maker of the Commercial Grade 20-inch 2-stroke Gas-Powered chain saw. You can get one used on Amazon for $481.99. Tell ‘em the piano_banger sent you and you get twenty percent off all sheet music.