Rarely does chopping wood or smashing rocks count as orchestra practice. But when the piece in question is Gustav Mahler's mighty Symphony No. 6, pretty much anything goes, at least for percussionists.
The symphony, first performed in 1906, is not Mahler's longest -- the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth all surpass it -- but it may require the most stamina for the percussionist delivering its defining hammer blows.
That's right: hammer blows, like the kind that ring bells on high strikers at carnivals.
Midway through the final movement, an enormous hammer delivers two thwacks -- Alma Mahler said her husband described them as blows of fate. Enhanced by timpani and bass drum, they are among the most dramatic moments in all symphonic music.
"I should probably go work out at the gym," Los Angeles Philharmonic percussionist Perry Dreiman said the other day. That's because he's the designated hitter, so to speak, for the orchestra's performances this weekend of the Sixth, to be conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Dreiman, a strapping 6 feet 5, also wielded the hammer when the Philharmonic last performed the work -- in December 2003, soon after Walt Disney Concert Hall opened, with Michael Tilson Thomas on the podium. In fact, Dreiman has struck the blows every time the orchestra has played the symphony since he joined it in 1985.
Yet what may at first seem like the ultimate kick in classical music turns out to be a complicated affair. First, there's the issue of the right smack.
"Mahler writes that it should sound like the blow of an ax, not like a hammer on a piece of iron," Eschenbach said by phone from Paris last week. "It should sound damp but loud, without any resonance, like a very loud thud."
And securing an object to produce that sound? That has forced orchestras around the world to act creatively. In the case of the Philharmonic, Dreiman arrived with his own hammer -- something he crafted during his days as a student at the Aspen Music Festival.
"It was constructed from an ax handle topped by a block of pine measuring 5 by 7 inches," he said, displaying it, Paul Bunyan-like, in Disney Hall's backstage percussion room.
At his first chance to use the hammer in his new job, however, in April 1987, Dreiman was thwarted -- by no less than Simon Rattle, now chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Actually, all concerned decided that Dreiman's modified ax just wasn't loud enough.
