Concert Review: The BPO Closes Its Season With Mahler's "Resurrection"

A Finale To Remember

Everything dies, baby, that's a fact.
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City” (1982)

The Buffalo Philharmonic routinely closes its seasons with a large, dramatic work as they did last year with Verdi’s Requiem, reviewed in this space here. Sunday’s season finale performance of the Resurrection (June 2, 2024) filled the stage with an orchestra augmented with two harps, an organ, the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus, and the solo voices of Ilana Davidson and Susan Platts (above).

Glowering cellos representing the ever-present specter of death opened the symphony. As the journey of the soul unfolded, the Orchestra filled Kleinhans Music Hall with Mahler’s dramatic trumpet fanfares, wall-rattling percussion, and ranks of heavenly voices.

Gustav Mahler never called his Second Symphony the “Resurrection,” but the name was inevitable as his massive work for orchestra, solo voices, and chorus is a deep meditation on the fate of the human soul beyond the veil.

In its five movements, Mahler raises ancient questions about the meaning of human existence and the experience of the death, bringing the symphony to a thrilling climax with the ecstatic release of the human soul into new life.

Listen to the Resurrection’s climactic conclusion as performed by Leonard Bernstein and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, below. In the final movement, the chorus sings:

O believe,
You were not born for nothing!
Have not lived for nothing,
Nor suffered!

What was created
Must perish;
What perished, rise again!
Cease from trembling!
Prepare yourself to live!

Thus, the Buffalo Philharmonic brought an emotional audience to its feet and closed a successful 2023-24 Season.

Sunday’s performance began with Edward Elgar’s Nimrod from his “Enigma Variations” in honor of recently deceased BPO cellist Monte Hoffman (above), a 60 year member of the Buffalo Philharmonic. It was lovely and fitting honor for a remarkable, well-lived life.