there was the quality of the orchestra's sound, which, I think, benefitted from the placement of the basses single-file against the back wall. (Fischer uses that configuration with his Budapest Festival Orchestra, too. Speaking of seating, Fischer also divides the NSO's first and second violins onstage, as Slatkin frequently did -- a time-honored seating arrangement I wish the Baltimore Symphony would experiment with.) There was an extra warmth and clarity throughout the string sections all night; the brass, with the smallest of exceptions, revealed admirable control, as well as ample tone that never turned blaring; the woodwinds were in highly colorful form; the percussion section was as sensitive to the slightest of effects as to the mightiest. The NSO rarely gets the respect it deserves. On nights like these (and some of the best nights of Slaktin's tenure, including his Mahler 6 last season), I think it is unmistakably on a world-class level. But Saturday was not just about technical skill. The performance also revealed abundant heart, thanks to Fischer's incisive, often exquistely nuanced approach to the daunting, roughly 95-minute score.

The conductor never lost sight of the overall architecture of the sprawling, multi-layered piece, never resorted to bombast or detoured into extended reverie, yet the interpretation was continually charged with both drama and poetry. I loved the almost chamber music-transparency he achieved in the gentler passages of the long first movement, as much as I delighted in the brisk buoyancy he brought to the march episodes. The coda was truly exhilarating. Craig Mulcahy's trombone playing in this opening movement had great tonal and expressive richness. The second movement found the violins at their sweetest as Fischer deftly sculpted the lilting waltz. The scherzo emerged with a mix of beauty and mystery; a small glitch aside, Steven Hendrickson's glowing offstage posthorn solo drifted into this dreamscape tellingly. Birgit Remmert's  vibrant contralto conveyed much of the depth of the Nietzsche poem in the fourth movement and made its mark on the subsequent choral movement, where the Children's Chorus of Washington and University of Maryland Concert Choir produced a lovely sound.

The soul of Mahler's Third is the finale, a kind of hymn that builds to a transcendent peak where everything about nature and humanity comes together in one profound statement of love's power. Fischer's tempo seemed just about right, slow without being heavy, never metronomic. His phrasing had an affecting intensity that carried the whole orchestra to the mountaintop, where the last chord was allowed a marvelous extension and, thankfully uninterrupted by premature applause, a turning inward, a softening in the very last seconds -- not an easy thing to achieve. A  long silence followed in the hall, the mark of a truly rapturous performance.

Fischer is in town for another couple of programs with the NSO. If Friday's Mahler performance is any indication, those are going to be two very hot weeks.

BALTIMORE SUN FILE PHOTO