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Final Sunday: Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony
Final Sunday: Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony
JESSICA CABE Festival Focus Writer
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Audiences have come to expect spectacle and bombast at the Aspen Music Festival and School’s (AMFS) Final Sunday concert, and this season’s program is sure to deliver. Themes of death and resurrection, mourning and hope, will fill the Benedict Music Tent and Music Lawn at 4 pm on Sunday, August 18, in the form of Bach’s Cantata 106 and Mahler’s epic Second Symphony. The program will be conducted by AMFS Music Director Robert Spano.
The Tent stage will appear sparse during the first half of the concert, with a small force of instrumentalists and Seraphic Fire, a group of seventeen professional choral singers who have partnered with the AMFS in the Seraphic Fire Choral Institute for the second season in a row, training about forty pre-professional singers over a two-week program.
Says Patrick Dupré Quigley, Seraphic Fire artistic director, “The most interesting part is it’s basically a 22-minute through-composed piece. Ends are almost always the beginning of something else.” The work sets the stage for the Mahler piece; while the two sound quite different, they play off each other in a very meaningful way.
“The Bach is a work that really asks a profound question about life,” says Alan Fletcher, AMFS president and CEO. “The way we think of it is Bach asks a question, and Mahler answers it.”
And Mahler’s answer is one that will leave audiences spellbound. His Second Symphony, nicknamed “Resurrection,” is a larger-than-life masterpiece featuring a huge orchestra, chorus, and solo singers. The Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus will join Seraphic Fire for the work.
“Despite the topic, or because of the topic, it’s offering hope and light beyond our material world as a piece of orchestral music,” says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor. “Mahler said that the symphony must include the world in it. It certainly does in terms of forces onstage. And it is not a dark view. It is actually a very hopeful and joyful view embracing resurrection.”
The 2019 Aspen Music Festival and School season comes to a close at 4 pm on Sunday, August 18, in the Benedict Music Tent. AMFS Music Director Robert Spano will lead the Aspen Festival Orchestra and soloists Mané Galoyan and Kelley O’Connor in Mahler’s Second Symphony, “Resurrection.”
Photo: Alex Irvin
Quigley of Seraphic Fire says the group is thrilled to have the opportunity to sing this Mahler work—an opportunity not often afforded to a choral group of their size.
“It’s a great honor for us, and we’re really looking forward to working with everyone,” he says. “It’s a massive work that leads up to a really empowering climax. I think the reason for its longevity is that Mahler 2, like Beethoven 9, has left the realm of simply being property of musicians and has come to be a cultural treasure.”
The Aspen Festival Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus, and Seraphic Fire will also be joined by world-renowned soloists: soprano Mané Galoyan and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor.
“Mané Galoyan is a terrific soprano who is achieving international recognition,” Santourian says. “She is quickly moving into a special strata of leading ladies roles. She studied here in the summer of 2017 and made a deep impression.Kelley O’Connor is a terrific concert and operatic mezzo who has been muse to several composers to write her works. She’s an exceptional interpreter of text.”
Fletcher says the Mahler piece, and the incredible musiciansperforming it, make for a perfect close to anotherAMFS season.
“Mahler’s Second Symphony is a wonderful marriage of one of the greatest orchestral composers, but also a great choral element,” he says. “It is very profound and inspiring and uplifting, and that makes it a great closer.”
