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Show Mahler, Mahler Land B. PIACERE It is gratifying to see the old notion of intermountain isolationism isola-tionism being rumpled in its very seat. It is noteworthy that Maestro Abravanel should program pro-gram the Mahler Seventh Symphony Sym-phony as a rumpling effect; but even more noteworthy that such a sizeable audience should have responded so warmly to it. Even for the advocate who might think of himself as a Mahlerite, this still calls for a good deal of listening. Perhaps for reasons of structural complexity, com-plexity, it lacks the popularity of his first four more direct symphonies, and it lacks a tempered tem-pered resolution that appears in the Eighth or in Das Lied Von Der Erde. The enthusiastic reception of the "Symphony of a Thousand" a year ago in the same hall might well be accounted for by sheer magnitude where extended ex-tended thematic development maintains its appeal through not only rich orchestral coloration colora-tion but through the size of its forces and kind of its sentiment. senti-ment. The Seventh is greatly different differ-ent from this; though its color is as rich as any of its predecessors, prede-cessors, it is a confusing kaleidoscopic kalei-doscopic vision of anticipation and rejection, a contradiction which confuses and delights simultaneously. si-multaneously. During four and a half movements it seems to be an "almost" work: movin" suggesting, struggling but never quite "resolving." Mahler passes through almost every kind of description and phraseology phrase-ology from mountainous brass-winded brass-winded landscapes, through intimate in-timate shadowed vales interrupted inter-rupted by sonorous stringed sorrow. Much would seem to have been stated in bitter hu mor perhaps in sympathy with Sartrean absurdity. Often there is sadness but never quite gloom. As if to substantiate tie seeming incongruities proposed in the first movement, the second sec-ond rings with touches of Viennese Vien-nese "smaltzsche" that might have been introduction music for an "Hungarian-Spanish dancer," or march themes that smack and clash for the attention atten-tion of Hollywood. And yet, the Scherzo dances with thai same kind of melancholy that Prokofieff's "Cinderella" uses to seduce her audience. The Second Night Music is once again the Song. Though instrumented rather than voiced, it reminds one of the attention, the intimacy, that Mahler is wont to give the lie-der, lie-der, using mandolin and guitar with solo strings to produce a mood almost antithetical to the first sections of the symphony. With a Siren's skill, he lulls the senses in the fourth movement and the fifth is well under way before one realizes that tie threshold has been passed. W "almost" takes on its own peculiar pe-culiar meaning, and then its too late to realize that the sic has been an opiate and u as listener you have been P in a kind of "incongruou Mahlerland where all manner of things become sudden?, gloriously mixed: Bavaria j Moscow, cowbells and sera phim harps, joy and sorrow,' the ingredients in prop"1" ure for a Breugelean fantw-Finally fantw-Finally the sides- becoj plurred in spinning, the Miw falls away; it's too late to for the logical. By then," hallucination is overpower) real. With" his own mod conjuring, Abravanel efteci ly produced theapot- |