Update: Fred Herseth to substitute for ailing Melody Racine

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike, now settled, cheated us of a Mahler Eighth Symphony, the “Symphony of A Thousand,” with the UMS Choral Union this spring. But Saturday evening at the Michigan Theater, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, joined by mezzo-soprano Melody Racine, the UMS Choral Union’s Women’s Chorus and the Ann Arbor Youth Chorale, constitute a mighty body to perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 3.

Though the symphony doesn’t have the “thousand” moniker of the 8th, merited by its giant forces, it is an enormous work: in scope, in orchestral and vocal forces, and in length.

“All nature speaks and tells such deep secrets as one may intuit in a dream,” Mahler wrote of the piece. And the first of its six movements alone is longer than Beethoven’s entire Fifth Symphony.

“Performing any Mahler symphony is a great challenge for musicians and conductors,” said A2SO Music Director Arie Lipsky in a recent phone conversation. “But the third in particular presents issues of interpretation — and endurance, actually.”

The Mahler third symphony lasts almost two hours.

The A2SO, no stranger to Mahler’s symphonic works, is preparing for those challenges. The rehearsal schedule has been retooled to acknowledge the work’s complexity. For reasons of stamina, dress rehearsal is Friday, rather than Saturday morning of the concert.

“We are so excited to join the many, many orchestras around the world that are celebrating this 100th anniversary of this unusual giant, Mahler,” said Lipsky, referring to performances commemorating the centenary of Mahler’s death. “He is one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era and somebody that many people have very strong feelings about — most of them positive. I don’t know anybody who stays indifferent to Mahler.”

Mahler completed the third symphony — which he saw as “bigger than life-size” — in 1896, and. conducted its premiere six years later, in 1902.

Its six movements, the last three performed without pause, are tone poems that Mahler originally gave programmatic titles — which he withdrew almost immediately, feeling they created misinterpretations. Still, conductors and listeners find them instructive, indications of the symphony’s all-creation, heaven-ward movement.

Titles or not, the score, of course, is revealing.

“The details are amazing,” said Lipsky. “He indicates every nuance, every phrase.”

However, Lipsky noted, there are no metronome markings, which would indicate, over and above markings like “Commodo” (comfortable) or “Sehr langsam” (very slow), what Mahler had in mind for tempo. “He’s granting to the conductors and players limited artistic license to evoke character,” Lipsky said.

And there is much character to be evoked.

“Mahler, as a young boy, composed a polka to which he composed a funeral march as an introduction,” Lipsky said, an illustration of the contradictory traits that mark Mahler’s mature works. “He was able to juggle all at once music that is comic, sometimes painful, sometimes heroic, sometimes hushed and mournful and then a couple of measure later, robust and jubilant. I think it’s Mahler’s unique achievement to fuse these elements into a magnificent symphonic statement. In the process he created one of the most distinctive sounds in the orchestral repertory.”

Voices play an important role in Mahler symphonies, and the third is no exception here, with a magical, moving alto solo anchoring the fourth movement, and chorus (children and women) joining for the fifth movement. The last movement, “What love tells me” (Mahler’s original title for it), is orchestral, however.

“What’s interesting, when you have the outlook of looking at several Mahler symphonies as a conductor, is when I conduct the 2nd symphony, “The Resurrection,” the chorus signifies the entrance into heaven,” Lipsky said. “It’s so natural how it progresses and grows, and we take the audience with us as we march into heaven; it’s one of the greatest moments in music.

“In the next symphony,” Lipsky continued, “it’s as if Mahler thought maybe that was too easy. How can we enter heaven without the chorus? So the choir signifies the morning bells, the naivete. They sing just a couple of minutes, then they are silent and then we continue with love, and then Mahler shows off how you can enter heaven without voices, and that’s an amazing journey by itself. Knowing Mahler, I’m sure he was challenging himself.”

The concert is co-sponsored by Bank of Ann Arbor and A. Michael and Remedios Montalbo Young, with support from MCACA and the National Endowment for the Arts.