The rat-a-tat of the drum and the triumphant blast of a solo horn were at first faint just outside the doors of the Tucson Music Hall hallway.
They came to full life a few moments later when an usher cracked open the side door leading into the hall, letting in light and, for those of us in a position to see it, a view of the two musicians.
Moments later, a quartet of trumpets blasted from the balcony, creating a surround-sound effect that filled the hall. Many of the 1,200 in the audience turned in their seats and scanned the balcony searching for the trumpeters, who were perched in pairs behind music stands, one on either side of the balcony rail.
Putting musicians offstage was among the distinctive sonic effects Gustav Mahler wrote into his Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection," which the Tucson Symphony Orchestra performed Thursday night.
The concert came 11 years to the day that the orchestra last undertook the challenge of the Mahler Two.
"Resurrection" is a monster of a piece, 80 minutes long, with bursts of energetically charged emotions that move from sorrow to anger, with triumphant flashes of joy.
It is no easy feat to mount. It requires a full complement of musicians and choristers and two guest soloists — 240 people all told, including two choirs from the University of Arizona, under the direction of TSO Chorus director Bruce Chamberlain, filled the Music Hall stage.
Most orchestras will find an excuse to perform Mahler Two; the New York Philharmonic used the 100th anniversary of Mahler conducting the American premiere of his Second to perform the piece last Dec. 8. The TSO's excuse: a follow-up to recording its first international commercial CD last season. It had to have a mammoth encore to that historic event, and the Mahler has mammoth written all over it.
The five-movement piece opens with a funeral march, written to honor Mahler's friend and musical colleague Hans von Bülow. TSO conductor George Hanson introduced the somber tone with quivering whispers from the strings that built and crashed with the introduction of brass and a crushing clank of the percussion.
The orchestra performed with shattering power throughout the first movement. The strings trembled and screamed in fits interrupted by pizzicato play that tempered the crushing blows of percussion, led by Homero Ceron multitasking as principal percussionist and lead timpanist. Sitting at the tail end of the bass section, twin harps added an ethereal essence.
That powerful playing was on hold in the second and third movements, which are not nearly as frenzied. In the calmly soothing second movement, Hanson, a self-professed Mahler devotee, lightened things up considerably. The orchestra performed the reflective, almost waltzy passages with sparkling elegance.
Mahler's Second Symphony attempts to be the late-19th century's answer to Beethoven's early-19th-century masterpiece Symphony No. 9 in D minor, "Choral." But unlike Beethoven, who put the chorus on equal footing with the orchestra, Mahler does not introduce the voices until the fourth movement, when the soloists came on stage. And even then, it was fleeting — one short song, "Urlicht," performed by the wonderful mezzo-soprano Cynthia Jansen, who showed off a rich, warm voice.
Guest soprano soloist Margarita De Arellano had to wait until deep into the wonderfully exhaustive fifth movement to take center stage. At first she had trouble projecting, but once she and Jansen sang the duet "Mit Flügeln," she seemed to have found her vocal footing.
The trumpet blasts from the balcony in the fifth movement invited the chorus into the performance. Its role was not immense, but its impact was impressive. The chorus entered almost in hushed tones, then soared into an exclamation at the symphony's end. On that final passage, the singers — comfortably crushed against the back end of the Music Hall stage — rose from their seats in one swift motion, creating an amazing effect. It was almost like the soul rising from the soil.
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Tucson Symphony Orchestra in concert Thursday at Tucson Music Hall. The concert, a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor, repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday.
