Musical roof raised for massive Mahler

It wasn’t quite the “Symphony of a Thousand” (that’s Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, and it’s usually a bit shy of a thousand anyway).

But an array of forces, within a whisker of 350 singers and players onstage at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Performance Hall, gave a very impressive performance of Mahler’s massive Symphony No. 2, subtitled “Resurrection.”

A 250-voice chorus (four college choirs, a community chorus and the Arkansas Chamber Singers) joined conductor Philip Mann and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, swelled to more than 90 pieces (including doubled woodwinds and brass, at least one additional string player per part, two harps and an organ).

Oh, and don’t forget the two soloists — soprano (and Little Rock native) Kristin Lewis and mezzo-soprano Christin-Marie Hill (who soloed with the orchestra in Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem in 2014), all part of an incredible evening of music-making.

The orchestral playing was absolutely superb throughout; the entire instrumental ensemble, thrust forward to the very edge of Robinson’s new stage extension, was flat on the floor, presenting unusual balance challenges (above and beyond having to balance the orchestra against the singers in the final movement), which Mann and the players met nearly perfectly. The last-movement offstage band — mostly brass, shuttling on and off both sides of the stage for some dramatic cross-stage counterpoint — was well balanced against the onstage players.

Hill gave the listeners a solo lagniappe, intoning a simple, sweet song for the fourth movement, “Urlicht” (“Primeval Light”), which Mahler mooched from his Das Knaben Wunderhorn song cycle.

Mann solved the orchestra-chorus balance for the first, pianissimo choral entrances by keeping the singers, including the soprano, seated; the sound was simply amazing. Every singer stood tall for the oh-my-God finale.

The performance takes close to 90 minutes, without intermission except a brief, composer-mandated break after the first movement.

Mann, soloists, chorus and orchestra will do it all again at 3 p.m. today at Robinson, 426 W. Markham St., Little Rock. Ticket information is available by calling (501) 666-1761, Extension 100, or online at ArkansasSymphony.org.