At the Orpheum Theatre on Saturday, June 4

The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra draws an end to its 2010-11 season with a mini-bout of Mahleria: two close-together concerts featuring epic works by Gustav Mahler. The first was on June 4 (and repeated on June 6), with his Symphony No. 1, “Titan”, scheduled for this Saturday (June 11).

Saturday’s concert offered what is, at least in my view, his finest work, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), a symphonic-length and -scaled series of six songs for large orchestra and two singers. These were originally baritone and tenor, but Mahler sanctioned a version for tenor and alto, or mezzo-soprano.

The sad, weary songs, inspired by Chinese poems, are about the transience of love, and see death as little more than a phase in Earth’s process of renewal. They are preferably sung by two men, but it would be hard to complain when one of the singers is the mezzo Allyson McHardy, who sang so stunningly in Hector Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust recently with the Vancouver Bach Choir.

The songs are exquisite, especially the bleak but operatic first and the last of the six—Mahler was truly happiest when he was most miserable.

The last, “Der Abschied” (“The Farewell”), is by far the longest, slowest, and quietest—all things that make it very difficult to sustain.

Tenor John Mac Master has also sung here often enough to secure trust in his stentorian tenor. But as well as both he and McHardy sang, there were several times that each got seriously submerged by the orchestra.

Conductor Bramwell Tovey didn’t seem to be paying enough attention to dynamic levels, namely Mahler’s common marking of “piano, piano, piano” (“softly, softly, softly”) for the orchestra.

Das Lied von der Erde wasn’t the only troubled work on the program; there was also Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes, Op. 33a, from his opera Peter Grimes, and this was solidly conducted. The other piece was Anatoly Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake, one of his orchestral miniatures. For a program freighted with darkness, it was a nice addition—a rarity and a purely sensuous six minutes.

But it wasn’t a perfect concert by any means. The loud honking from hockey-mad drivers had to have been to be picked up by the CBC, which was taping the concert. And though asked not to clap between movements, the crowd did so at every break. And wouldn’t you know, Tovey began the concert conducting the Hockey Night in Canada theme, after taking off his jacket and revealing “Maestro 1” on his Canucks jersey.

It was nauseating enough to make you think of the separation of church and state. Except, which would you call which anymore?