Symphony finds truly grand finale in Mahler.

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

Music director Giancarlo Guerrero and the Eugene Symphony will conclude their season Thursday night with a new concertmaster, Kathryn Lucktenberg, and a huge choral-orchestral work, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (``Resurrection'').

Two soloists, Chicago soprano Elizabeth Norman and Salem mezzo-soprano Allison Swensen, will join the orchestra and chorus - 220 strong - in Mahler's 80-minute, five-movement symphony, which thematically begins with death and ends with a life-affirming statement of faith.

An article on a Christian History Institute Web site notes that, "Resurrection is the heart of the Gospel. Mahler, who was no Christian, could not have written such a symphony had there not been centuries of Christianity underlying the culture into which he was born. But Mahler did not draw his text from the Gospel."

The article notes disapprovingly that Mahler did not really believe in the Last Judgment, and quotes from the composer's own program notes to prove the point: "There is no punishment and no reward. An overwhelming love illuminates our being."

In his Eugene Symphony program notes, Portland music writer James McQuillen writes that Mahler based his third movement on verses from a folk poem collection titled ``Das Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn),'' specifically about St. Anthony of Padua's Sermon to the Fishes.

The fourth movement, McQuillen notes, is a soprano setting of "Urlicht (Primal Light)," also from "Das Knaben Wunderhorn."

The fifth and final movement, McQuillen writes, moves through the ancient Latin Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), ``along with more music of terror and anguish,'' into Friedrich Klopstock's hymn "Auferstehung (Resurrection)," which was sung in 1894 during the memorial service for Mahler's colleague, pianist and conductor Hans von Bulow.

The entire symphony, composed of movements written as early as 1888, was first performed in Berlin on Dec. 13, 1895.

"Its musical chords clashed or were more unresolved (dissonant) than in works audiences were accustomed to hearing," the Christian History Institute article notes. "Tempos changed rapidly. In places it was more oratorio than symphony. ...

"But today, those who love art music consider it one of the most thrilling masterpieces in the symphonic repertoire."

Eugene Symphony chorus director Sharon Paul finds Mahler's Symphony No. 2 challenging from the singers' point of view.

"He writes some of the quietest and some of the loudest choral singing in any choral-orchestral work, sometimes only bars apart" says Paul, who also has a "day job" as director of choral activities and chairwoman of vocal and choral studies at the University of Oregon School of Music.

"The chorus does not appear in the piece until the fifth movement, so they must sit, very still, on stage for over an hour before they sing. When they do come in, their voices are supposed to appear as if out of nowhere, in a quiet and completely a cappella entrance.

`It's one of the most difficult entrances in any work I know of. In the end of the piece, the chorus has to manage to be heard over the entire orchestra and organ. It's a magnificent, climactic moment to this extraordinary work."

Soprano soloist Norman, known for her interpretations of Mahler, has taken part in several performances of the composer's Second, Fourth and Eighth symphonies.

Swensen, the mezzo-soprano soloist, made her Carnegie Hall debut in the world premiere of Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev's "Upon Reading a Psalm." Last month, she sang in Kurt Weill's "Street Scene" with Portland Opera.

Lucktenberg, appearing for the first time as the Eugene Symphony's concertmaster, is no stranger to such responsibility.

She was concertmaster of the Honolulu Symphony from 1981 to 1993, before moving to Eugene with her husband, cellist Steven Pologe. She is an associate professor of violin at the University of Oregon and performs with the music school's Oregon String Quartet.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Eugene Symphony

What: Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (``Resurrection'')

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Where: Silva Concert Hall, Hult Center, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street

Tickets: $18 to $38 through the Hult Center box office, 682-5000

Also: Free concert preview by music director Giancarlo Guerrero and soloists Elizabeth Norman and Allison Swensen, noon Wednesday in Hult Center's Studio One