Expect power at symphony concert

Spokane Symphony conductor Eckart Preu describes this weekend’s program as consisting of two small hills and a giant mountain. That’s not to say that one piece is better than the others, or that two of them are stylistically simple. No, the so-called “mountain” is Austrian composer Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, which clocks in around 75 minutes and requires a tremendous amount of musical stamina. Not many pieces can quite measure up.

Mahler was all about ambition and scope – his eighth symphony requires so many musicians that it’s colloquially referred to as the “Symphony of a Thousand” – and Symphony No. 5, which debuted in 1904, is no exception. Over the course of five movements, Mahler goes from funereal and dirgelike to celebratory and exultant, and all the individual moving parts within the orchestra are famously difficult.

“Like Beethoven’s fifth symphony, it starts at tragedy and ends in triumph,” Preu said. “(Mahler) wrote it over two summers. The first summer, he was single and he’d just survived a near-death experience. … The end he wrote in the second summer, when he was married and expecting a child, and it was the happiest time of his life. So you have this whole human experience.”

Kyle Wilbert, the symphony’s primary French horn player, has an extended solo in the piece’s third movement. It’s essentially a one-man concerto, which he says is unusual for the horn.

“It’s the only piece I know of where you basically get a whole movement that you’re featured in over and over again,” Wilbert said. “It’s physically strenuous – there’s a lot of loud playing followed by very soft playing – so going from one extreme to another is physically challenging.”

“There are moments where the house will shake, and there are moments where you can barely hear anything,” Preu said of the piece’s wildly alternating dynamics. “It’s totally extreme. … People are looking for life-changing experiences, and this just might be one of those pieces that turns people onto something they never thought was possible. It’s going to have an impact no matter what.”

“It’s very viscerally moving, just because of the volume of sound and the amount of people onstage,” Wilbert said.

Along with the Mahler epic, the symphony will also tackle Claude Debussy’s oft-performed “Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun” and modern composer Mason Bates’ “Mothership,” which melds classical elements with electronic flourishes.

“The little pieces are very nice because they’re a totally different style and color than the Mahler,” Preu said. “The Debussy is a perfumey, delicate piece – it’s like a dreamscape almost. Then the Bates piece is very contemporary, very recognizable and a lot of fun, actually. … What these three pieces have in common is they explore new soundscapes. They’re revolutionary in many ways.”