Colorado Symphony 2016/17 Season Presenting Sponsor:
MASTERWORKS • 2016/2017 MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 3 CONDUCTED BY ANDREW LITTON COLORADO SYMPHONY ANDREW LITTON, conductor MICHELLE DEYOUNG, mezzo COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS, DUAIN WOLFE, director COLORADO CHILDREN’S CHORALE, DEBORAH DESANTIS, artistic director This Weekend's Concerts are Gratefully Dedicated to the Chambers Family Fund Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Ed and Laurie Bock Sunday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Robert S. Graham / Erik Rurik Satie
Friday, May 19, 2017, at 7:30pm Saturday, May 20, 2017, at 7:30pm Sunday, May 21, 2017, at 2:30pm Boettcher Concert Hall
MAHLER
Symphony No. 3 in D minor
Kräftig, Entschieden Tempo di menuetto: Sehr mässig Comodo, scherzando, ohne Hast Sehr langsam, misterioso Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck Sehr langsam und durchaus mit innigster Empfindung
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES
JEFF WHEELER
ANDREW LITTON, conductor Andrew Litton is Music Director of the New York City Ballet and Principal Guest Conductor of the Colorado Symphony. He recently ended his twelve-year tenure as Music Director of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic. Under Litton’s leadership, the Bergen Philharmonic gained international recognition through extensive touring, making debuts at London’s BBC Proms; Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw; and appearances at Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin’s Philharmonie, and New York’s Carnegie Hall. They recorded 25 CD records for Sweden’s BIS and Britain’s Hyperion labels. In acknowledgment of Litton’s service to the cultural life of Norway, Norway’s King Harald knighted Litton with the Royal Order of Merit. Now Bergen Philharmonic Music Director Laureate and Conductor Laureate of Britain’s Bournemouth Symphony, he carries on as Artistic Director of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest, a post he has held since 2003. He guest conducts the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies, and has a discography of almost 130 recordings with awards including America’s Grammy,™ France’s Diapason d’Or, and many other honors. Litton was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony from 1988-1994. A Music Director of the Dallas Symphony from 1994-2006, he hired over one third of the players, led the orchestra on three major European tours, appeared four times at Carnegie Hall, created a children’s television series broadcast nationally and in widespread use in school curricula, produced 28 recordings, and helped raise the orchestra’s endowment from $19 million to $100 million. He has conducted the Colorado Symphony both as Music Director and Artistic Advisor since 2012. An accomplished pianist, Litton often conducts from the keyboard and enjoys performing chamber music with his orchestra colleagues. Passionate about jazz, and long an admirer of the late jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, Litton recorded his first solo piano album, A Tribute to Oscar Peterson, released in 2014.
MICHELLE DEYOUNG, mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung appears regularly with the top orchestras in the world including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, and the Concertgebouworkest. She has also performed at the prestigious festivals of Ravinia, Tanglewood, Saito Kinen, Edinburgh, and Lucerne. Equally at home on the opera stage, Ms. DeYoung has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Teatro alla Scala, Bayreuth Festival, Berliner Staatsoper, Paris Opera, Theater Basel, and the Tokyo Opera. A multi-Grammy® award-winning recording artist, Ms. DeYoung’s impressive discography includes Kindertotenlieder, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, and Das Klagende Lied with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS Media), Les Troyens with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live!), and Mahler Symphony No 3 with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Bernard Haitink (CSO Resound) and the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck (Challenge Records International). Her first solo disc was released on the EMI label.
PROGRAM 2 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES DUAIN WOLFE, director, Colorado Symphony Chorus Recently awarded two Grammys® for Best Choral Performance and Best Classical Recording, Duain Wolfe is founder and Director of the Colorado Symphony Chorus and Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. This year marks Wolfe’s 31st season with the Colorado Symphony Chorus. The Chorus has been featured at the Aspen Music Festival for over two decades. Wolfe, who is in his 21st season with the Chicago Symphony Chorus has collaborated with Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, and the late Sir George Solti on numerous recordings including Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, which won the 1998 Grammy® for Best Opera Recording. Wolfe’s extensive musical accomplishments have resulted in numerous awards, including an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Denver, the Bonfils Stanton Award in the Arts and Humanities, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline and the Michael Korn Award for the Development of the Professional Choral Art. Wolfe is also founder of the Colorado Children’s Chorale, from which he retired in 1999 after 25 years; the Chorale celebrated its 40th anniversary last season. For 20 years, Wolfe also worked with the Central City Opera Festival as chorus director and conductor, founding and directing the company’s young artist residence program, as well as its education and outreach programs. Wolfe’s additional accomplishments include directing and preparing choruses for Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, the Bravo!Vail Festival, the Berkshire Choral Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Grand Teton Music Festival. He has worked with Pinchas Zuckerman as Chorus Director for the Canadian National Arts Centre Orchestra for the past 13 years.
DEBORAH DESANTIS, artistic director, Colorado Children’s Chorale Deborah DeSantis has been instrumental in the growth and success of the Colorado Children’s Chorale since 1983. She regularly conducts performances throughout metropolitan Denver and has led numerous tours, nationally and internationally. Her passion for artistic excellence and music education has been a driving force in the development of the Chorale’s School Partnership program, which she established in 1994. In addition to designing and directing community performance residencies for the Chorale, she frequently serves as guest clinician and conductor for school and community children’s choral programs throughout the nation. Debbie has conducted seminars and workshops for Chorus America, the American Choral Director’s Association, Colorado Music Educators Association, the Choristers’ Guild, and the Suzuki Institute. She has served as cochair of Chorus America’s Children/Youth Choir Constituency.
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 3
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS The 2016-2017 Colorado Symphony Concert Season marks the 33rd year of the Colorado Symphony Chorus. Founded in 1984 by Duain Wolfe at the request of Gaetano Delogu, then the Music Director of the Symphony, the chorus has grown, over the past three decades, into a nationally-respected ensemble. This outstanding chorus of 180 volunteers joins the Colorado Symphony for numerous performances (more than 25 this year alone), and radio and television broadcasts, to repeat critical acclaim. The Chorus has performed at noted music festivals in the Rocky Mountain region, including the Colorado Music Festival, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, where it has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Dallas Symphony. For over two decades, the Chorus has been featured at the world-renowned Aspen Music Festival, performing many great masterworks under the baton of notable conductors Lawrence Foster, James Levine, Murry Sidlin, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, and David Zinman. Among the recordings the Colorado Symphony Chorus has made is a NAXOS release of Roy Harris’s Symphony No. 4. The Chorus is also featured on a recent Hyperion release of the Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem and Stephen Hough’s Missa Mirabilis. In 2009, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Chorus, Duain Wolfe conducted the Chorus on a 3-country, 2-week concert tour of Europe, presenting the Verdi Requiem in Budapest, Vienna, Litomysl, and Prague, and in 2016 the Chorus returned to Europe for concerts in Paris, Strasbourg, and Munich. From Evergreen to Lochbuie, and Boulder to Castle Rock, singers travel each week to rehearsals and performances in Denver totaling about 80 a year. The Colorado Symphony continues to be grateful for the excellence and dedication of this remarkable, all-volunteer ensemble! For an audition appointment, call 303.308.2483.
COLORADO CHILDREN’S CHORALE For more than forty years the Colorado Children’s Chorale has brought its artistry and charm to audiences throughout the world. With a diverse repertoire ranging from fully staged opera and musical theater to standard choral compositions in classical, folk and popular traditions, the Chorale performs with an innovative stage presentation and a unique theatrical spirit. In recognition of its artistic excellence, the Chorale was awarded the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and the prestigious El Pomar Award for Excellence in Arts and Humanities. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Deborah DeSantis and Executive Director Meg Steitz, the Colorado Children’s Chorale annually trains 500 members between the ages of 7 and 14 from all ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds representing more than 180 schools in the Denver metro area and beyond. Since its founding in 1974, the Chorale has sung countless performances with some of the world’s finest performing arts organizations, performed for numerous dignitaries, and appeared in several television and radio broadcasts. The Performance Program includes a series of self-produced concerts, numerous performances with other Colorado arts organizations, and touring around the world. The Chorale presents annual performances of Christmas with the Children’s Chorale and Spring with the Children’s Chorale at Boettcher Concert Hall in the Denver Performing Arts Complex, A Classical Afternoon at Montview Presbyterian Church, and Performing Small Miracles at Colorado Heights Theater. Spring Fling Sing! is presented in venues across the metro area. This season also includes La Boheme, A Colorado Christmas, Mahler’s Symphony #3 and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the Colorado Symphony, Carmina Burana with the Aspen Music Festival, and Carmen with Central City Opera. PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS WOMEN'S ROSTER Duain Wolfe, Founding Director and Conductor; Mary Louise Burke, Associate Conductor; Travis Branam, Assistant Conductor; Taylor Martin, Assistant Conductor; Eric Israelson, Chorus Manager; Barbara Porter, Associate Manager; Brian Dukeshier, Danni Snyder, Accompanists SOPRANO I Brown, Jamie Causey, Denelda Choi, LeEtta H. Coberly, Sarah Colbert, Gretchen Daniels, Kaylin E. Dirksen, Sarah Dukeshier, Laura Emerich, Kate A. Gile, Jenifer D. Gill, Lori C. Graber, Susan. Guynn, Erika Harpel, Jennifer Henrich, Sarah B. Hinkley, Lynnae C. Hittle, Erin R. Hofmeister, Mary Hupp, Angela M. Joy, Shelley E. Kirschner, Mary E. Knecht, Melanie Kushnir, Marina Long, Lisa Look, Cathy Maupin, Anne Medema, Stephanie Moraskie, Wendy L.
Perera, Alokya P. Porter, Barbara A. Ropa, Lori A. Rudolph, Kathi L. Schawel, Camilia Sladovnik, Roberta A. Solich, Stephanie A. Stegink, Nicole J. Tate, Judy Van Leeuwen, Andrea Williams, Courtney Young, Cara M. SOPRANO II Ascani, Lori Blum, Jude Bowen, Alex S. Brauchli, Margot L. Christus, Athanasia Coberly, Ruth A. Cote, Kerry H. Dakkouri, Claudia Gross, Esther J. Higginbotham, Heather Irwin, Emily Khalifeh, Anne
Kraft, Lisa D. Linder, Dana Montigne, Erin Nyholm, Christine M. O’Nan, Jeannette R. Pflug, Kim Rae, Donneve S. Rattray, Rebecca E. Rider, Shirley J. Ruff, Mahli Saddler, Nancy C. Snyer, Lynne M. Travis, Stacey L. Von Roedern, Susan K. Walker, Marcia L. Weinstein, Sherry L. Woodrow, Sandy Zisler, Joan M. ALTO I Adams, Priscilla P. Brady, Lois F. Branam, Emily M. Brown, Kimberly Buesing, Amy Clauson, Clair T. Conrad, Jayne M.
Daniel, Sheri L. Drake, Erin A. Dunkin, Aubri K. Edwards, Dana Franz, Kirsten D. Frey, Susie Gayley, Sharon R. Groom, Gabriella D. Guittar, Pat Haller, Emily Holst, Melissa J. Hoopes, Kaia M. Horle, Carol E. Kolstad, Annie Kraft, Deanna Lawlor, Betsy McWaters, Susan Nordenholz, Kristen Passoth, Ginny Pringle, Jennifer Thayer, Mary B. Virtue, Pat Wyatt, Judith
ALTO II Boothe, Kay A. Carlisle, Allison Chatfield, Cass Cox, Martha E. Deck, Barbara Dominguez, Joyce Eslick, Carol A. Golden, Daniela Hoskins, Hansi Jackson, Brandy H. Janasko, Ellen D. Kibler, Janice London, Carole A. Maltzahn, Joanna K. Marchbank, Barbara J. McNulty, Kelly M. Mendicello, Beverly Meromy, Leah Nittoli, Leslie M. Paguirigan, Kali Pak, Lisa Schalow, Elle Scooros, Pamela R. Townsend, Lisa Trierweiler, Gin
COLORADO CHILDREN'S CHORALE CONCERT CHOIR ROSTER Deborah DeSantis, Artistic Director and Conductor Mary Louise Burke, Associate Director and Conductor Evan Ackerman James Algermissen Ksenia Balabanova Ella Barrett Kylie Bennett John Berezniak Ashley Blondo Ben Bosch Gabi Bustamante Aiden Cessna Sophia Chavez Gabriella Chernoff Gabrielle Cohlmia Ethan Conklin Lucy Crile Emily Cull Kerala Curkendall Strider Dolfi
Katie Dupper Ophelia Egbe Adrienne Essel Kayla Farrell Emilia Fischer Reagan Fitzgerald Sophia Glinsky Madeline Greenberg Cailin Gregoire Amelie Haas Ethan Hecker Gunnar Henry Elena Higgins Samantha Hodson Christina Hoener Alex Holland Mary Hopkins Nate Hutabarat
Charles Hutchings Beckett Jansen Jake Jui Annabel Kales Kuyla Kim Shaedryn Klein Nora Knight Claire Koenig Connor Kramer Julia Kung Ella Leafgreen Vivianne Lee Evelyn Lee Amber Liñan Daisy Lynch Will Mahaffy Isabel Malik Eleni Maniatis Jacob Mays
Aeddon McPherson Case Meyer Noah Meyerhoff Maryn Miller Heather Mooney Maressa MoraCalderón Levi Morris Luke Morse Sarah Myers Carl North Chloe Osuna Gareth Page-Roth Jack Parry William Perrone Christian Peters Fiona Radebaugh Mariam Raynor
Johnny Reeves Lucy Reynolds Daya Robles Emelie Rosenberg Riley Ross Keeley Scanlan Talia Shier Claire Sladovnik Lily Suchomel Juliana Talbert Ira Timme Bridget Trujillo Max TrujilloAcevedo Davin Vanoni Alaina Wharton Josie Wilger Abigail Wilson Elliot Wu
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911): Symphony No. 3 in D minor (1895-1897) Gustav Mahler was born on July 7, 1860, in Kalist, Bohemia, and died on May 18, 1911, in Vienna. He composed his monumental Third Symphony during the summers of 1895 and 1896; the orchestration was completed during the following winters. The composer conducted the work’s first complete performance, on June 6, 1902, at the Tonkünstlerfest of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein in the Rhineland city of Krefeld. Felix Weingartner had previously given the second, third, and sixth movements in Berlin during March 1897. The score calls for four flutes (third and fourth doubling piccolo), four oboes (fourth doubling English horn), E-flat clarinet, four clarinets (third doubling bass clarinet, fourth doubling E-flat clarinet), four bassoons (fourth doubling contrabassoon), eight horns, four trumpets, posthorn (playable on flügelhorn), four trombones, tuba, two sets of timpani, percussion, two harps, and strings. Duration is about 100 minutes. The last performance of the Symphony took place on June 1 and 2, 2012, with Jesus Lopez-Cobos conducting the orchestra. On March 29, 1891, at the age of 37, Gustav Mahler arrived in Hamburg to become chief conductor of that city’s opera, a post he had earned by rising through a series of successively more important appointments in Cassel, Prague, Leipzig and Budapest which showed him to be one of the greatest interpretative musicians of his time. Despite his brilliance on the podium, then matched only by Bülow, Toscanini, Nikisch, Strauss and Weingartner, Mahler’s deepest ambition was to compose, to embody in tone the complexity, profundity and humanity of the world around him. Indeed, composition was for him an almost insatiable need. “I don’t choose what to compose,” he often said. “It chooses me.” In his perceptive study of the man and his music, Kurt Blaukopf suggested that Mahler was possessed by some higher power that drove him to creative work: “Mahler himself did not compose — something in him composed.” The enormous pressure of his conducting and administrative duties (he sometimes led six performances a week!) prevented Mahler from composing during the winter, so this activity was relegated to the summer months, when the opera houses were closed. June, July, and August were therefore not a time of relaxation for him but rather one of intense, often exhausting, creative work, a need which he could not meet with just the traditional Kapellmeister genres of song and piano pieces and chamber scores, but one that could only be satisfied by the grand, public form of the symphony. “If I want to go down into posterity,” he confided to the critic Max Graf, “I have to write large works during my short holiday.” Mahler’s favored place for his summertime retreats from the madding cities was among the hills and lakes of Austria’s Salzkammergut. In 1893, he found a villa on Lake Atter, thirty miles east of Salzburg, whose main attraction was a tiny, isolated cottage on the shore that provided him with the seclusion he demanded when composing, and he engaged the compound for several seasons. (He insisted on absolute quiet when he composed: the local children were bribed by Mahler’s sister and guests with toys and candy to play in silence; singing fieldhands were constantly admonished, and eventually told that the eccentric musician had lost his presence of mind and might be aroused to terrible acts by even the slightest disturbance; overly noisy chickens and livestock were bought and roasted for supper.) Mahler furnished his composing hut sparsely with a table, wooden chairs, a sofa, and a piano shipped from Vienna; the infrequent visitors he allowed into this sanctum complained that they were showered with beetles when the door was thrown open.
PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES Bruno Walter, the young assistant conductor at Hamburg who became one of Mahler’s most ardent champions and greatest interpreters, wrote that the composer “spent his mornings in work [at the cottage], undisturbed by the noises of the house. He went there at six in the morning, at seven his breakfast was silently placed before him, and only when he opened the door at noon would he return to normal life. Later he might walk about the meadow, or rush uphill and go for longer walks.” When Mahler took up this daily regimen following his arrival at Steinbach on June 5, 1895, he had already formulated a plan for the successor to the “Resurrection” Symphony, whose partial performance just three months earlier in Berlin under his direction marked the first wide public recognition of his compositional genius. The new work was to be a grand, musical evocation of the forces and creations of Nature with, he wrote to his friend Friedrich Löhr, “the emphasis on my personal life (in the form of ‘what things tell me.’)” At the beginning of the summer, the piece was called “The Happy Life, a Midsummer Night’s Dream (not after Shakespeare)”; by August it had become “The Joyful Science” [after the title of the book by Nietzsche], A Summer Morning’s Dream.” There were originally to be seven movements divided into two parts. The first part, which Mahler called an “introduction,” though it eventually grew to a length of forty minutes, was titled “The Awakening of Pan; Summer marches in (procession of Bacchus).” Comprising the second part of the Symphony were a succession of shorter movements: “What the flowers of the meadow tell me”; “What the animals in the forest tell me”; “What the night tells me”; “What the angels tell me”; “What love tells me”; and “Life in Heaven”. Incorporated into this giant musical panorama were settings of poems by Nietzsche and from Des Knaben Wunderhorn for contralto soloist and choruses of women and children. Work progressed quickly on the Symphony. By the end of June, 1895, Mahler had drafted all of the seven movements except for the first one, and he confided to friends that together they comprised what was “probably the ripest and most individual work I have yet composed.” During July, he put aside composing for a few days in order to visit with the ailing Brahms at his summer haunt in nearby Bad Ischl. When Mahler took up work on his sketches again, he grew apprehensive about the immense scale that the work was assuming in its temporal duration, orchestral requirements and vast canvas of musical styles, and he started referring to it, only half-jokingly, as his “monster.” “My calling it a symphony is really inaccurate, for it doesn’t keep to the traditional form in any way,” he told Natalie Bauer-Lechner, the summer house guest of the Mahlers who kept a detailed chronicle during her stay. “But to me ‘symphony’ means constructing a world with all the technical means at one’s disposal. The eternally new and changing content determines its own form.” This statement is really the essence of Mahler’s musical philosophy — to embody an entire universe of feeling and experience in tones. He returned to the idea in a letter about the Third Symphony to his close friend, the Wagnerian soprano, Anna Bahr-Mildenburg: “Imagine a work of such scope that the whole world actually is reflected in it — one becomes, so to speak, only an instrument upon which the universe plays.... My Symphony will be something that the world has never heard before! In this score, all nature speaks and tells such deep secrets as one may intuit in a dream! I tell you, at certain places in the score, a quite uncanny feeling takes possession of me, and I feel as if I had not created this myself. If only I can complete the thing as I envisage it.” Composition on the second through seventh movements was largely finished by the time he left Steinbach in August; their orchestration and thoughts about the music that would precede them occupied him during the following winter. SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 7
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES Mahler returned to Steinbach in June 1896, impatient to resume work on the Symphony. He had been making notes and sketches for the first movement for several months, but discovered to his horror when he arrived that he had left them in his office in Hamburg. Bauer-Lechner reported that he was like a caged tiger, growling and pacing, until they were delivered a week later. The first movement grew quickly thereafter. Sometime before it was completed, he told Bauer-Lechner, “It has almost ceased to be music; it is hardly anything but sounds of nature. ‘Summer marches in’ will be the prelude.... Naturally enough, it doesn’t come off without a struggle with the opponent, Winter; but Winter is easily defeated, and Summer, with his strength and superior power, soon gains undisputed mastery.” Mahler also decided during the summer of 1896 to remove the final, vocal movement, “Life in Heaven,” from the Symphony. This lovely music was not wasted, however, since it became the seed from which grew the Fourth Symphony, where it was used as the finale. The Third Symphony was completed in short score on August 6th. The first person to hear it was Bruno Walter (Mahler was absolutely secretive about the musical content, if not the underlying philosophy or program, of his works in progress), when the composer played it for him in the cottage at Steinbach. “Familiar as I had become with the spiritual atmosphere of the Symphony,” Walter wrote in his book on the composer, “it was a shattering and undreamed-of experience to hear him perform it on the piano. I felt as if I were recognizing him for the first time. His whole being seemed to breathe a mysterious affinity with the forces of nature. Had he been only a ‘nature lover’ in the ordinary sense of the word, his music, I thought, might have turned out more ‘civilized.’ But what I had always felt subconsciously — his Dionysian saturation with nature — was voiced now as a primitive musical sound from the very depths of his soul. Here I seemed to see him in the round: the oppressive weight placed on him by the stark majesty of the rocky summits, love for the tender flower, a sense of the shyness and drollery, and the untamable ferocity, within the primeval depths of the animal world, and finally the intuitive yearning of the human spirit to penetrate beyond the bounds of earthly transience. I carried this music with me when we parted, and it was a long time before its disturbing presence could pass into secure possession.” To which Philip Barford, in his study of Mahler’s symphonies, added, “In the background of his mind there seems always to be the ladder up which humanity can climb to heaven.” Mahler completed the orchestration of the Third Symphony during the winter of 1896-97, but was unable to arrange for its full performance, so he reluctantly allowed Felix Weingartner to extract the second, third, and sixth movements from the complete work and conduct them in Berlin during March 1897. They were received with only small enthusiasm. When Mahler finally performed the work complete, however, on June 6, 1902, at the Tonkünstlerfest of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein in the city of Krefeld, on the west bank of the Rhine north of Cologne, the composer’s sister, Justine, reported that it “made an enormous sensation, especially among the musicians.” Though Mahler was always impatient about the number of performances given to his music, this Symphony was heard and appreciated on numerous occasions during his lifetime. He was particularly gratified by one performance of it that he conducted with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1903. “The tumult of applause,” he wrote, “was almost daunting. Everyone said nothing like it could be remembered. I have beaten Strauss, who is all the rage here, by miles.” A year later, after the Symphony was first given in Vienna (Mahler astutely never allowed the world premieres of his music to occur in Vienna while he was director of the Opera there), the composer received a letter from the 30-year-old Arnold Schoenberg, who was still immersed in the hyper-romanticism that had yielded Gurrelieder and Pelleas und PROGRAM 8 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES Melisande. Schoenberg ended the letter with his reaction to the Third Symphony: “I saw your very soul naked, stark naked.... I felt your Symphony. I shared in the battling for illusion; I suffered the pangs of disillusionment; I saw the forces of good and evil wrestling with each other; I saw a man in torment struggling towards inward harmony.... Forgive me, I cannot feel by halves.” For the new work’s first performance, Mahler allowed the title and movement descriptions that he had devised for its composition to be printed in the program notes. After the premiere, however, he grew distrustful of mere words to frame the sense of his music, and he withdrew the sobriquets. “Those titles I originally intended for non-musicians as a point of reference and a guide to the thought, or rather, mood-content of individual movements, of movement to movement and to the whole,” he wrote. “That I did not succeed, as indeed one never can succeed, in this intent, and only opened the way to misinterpretations of the worst kind, soon became clear to me.... I now have given up for good any further commenting, analyzing, or providing any listener’s aid whatever! These titles will certainly tell you something after you have become acquainted with the score. From them, you can gain some suggestion of how I imagined the constantly increasing articulation of feeling, from the brooding, elementary forces of nature, to the tender creations of the human heart, which in turn reach out beyond themselves, pointing the way to God.” Despite his misgivings, however, his literary program is essential for understanding the ethic and progression of this magnificent Symphony, the longest such work in the repertory. Indeed, the philosophical program existed before the music was begun, and was the germ from which it grew. *** Of Mahler’s Third Symphony, Deryck Cooke wrote, “The idea behind the work was a conception of existence in its totality. The vast first movement was to represent the summoning of Nature out of non-existence by the god Pan, symbolized by the emergence of summer out of winter; and after this, the five shorter movements were to represent the ‘stages of being’ (as Mahler expressed it in a letter), from vegetable and animal life, through mankind and the angels, to the love of God.” Cooke called the opening movement (“Pan awakes; Summer marches in”), which solely occupies Part I of the Symphony, “the most original and flabbergasting thing Mahler ever conceived.” Though there are some vestigial connections with traditional formal types, this movement is better understood philosophically, as the musical evocation of powerful forces, than analytically. A long introduction, blown into being by an awesome opening blast from massed horns, is filled with what Mahler called “nature sounds.” There follows the struggle between dark Winter, with its sinister march theme, and life-giving Summer, first portrayed by a dancing strain cheerfully displayed by the winds. Other themes arise on both sides and are drawn into the conflict, but Summer prevails. This is music, in the mold of Beethoven, that is uplifting and fructifying, another evidence of Mahler’s underlying belief in the resiliency of good and its ultimate triumph over evil. “A pessimist does not think and feel like this,” noted Guido Adler. After calling up gargantuan cosmic forces in the opening movement, Mahler turned in the Symphony’s second part to evoking Nature’s (and God’s) bounties, or, more accurately, his musico/emotional responses to them. Mahler called the second movement (“What the flowers of the meadow tell me”) a “minuet,” though it is really more a country dance than a SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 9
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES recreation of Mozartian elegance. In its deliberate naïvete, it provides a startling contrast to the overwhelming music that precedes it, a quality Mahler employed throughout his works to heighten their drama and intensify their expression. (Mahler requested a pause of a few minutes between the first and second movements.) Near the end of his life, Mahler met with Sigmund Freud, and they uncovered a childhood experience from which this technique of juxtaposing very different musical styles may have grown. “His father, apparently a brutal person, treated his wife very badly,” recorded Freud. “When Mahler was young there was an especially painful scene between his parents. It became quite unbearable for the boy, who rushed away from the house. At that moment, however, a hurdy-gurdy in the street was grinding out the popular Viennese air, “Ach, Du Lieber Augustin.” In Mahler’s opinion, the conjunction of high tragedy and light amusement was from then on inextricably fixed in his mind, and the one mood inevitably brought on the other.” When the piece was still new, Mahler told Natalie Bauer-Lechner, “Yet but for that marriage, neither I nor my Third Symphony would exist — I find that quite remarkable.” The third movement (“What the animals in the woods tell me”) is a reworking of a song with a cheeky text from Das Knaben Wunderhorn, “Ablösung im Sommer” (“Changing of the Summer Guard”), that Mahler composed around 1890. Woven into the movement are episodes for solo posthorn, the traditional instrument used to announce the arrival of the mail coach and therefore associated with distant places and sentimental longing. The passages here entrusted to the posthorn are some of the most nostalgic and sweetly dreamy found in any of Mahler’s symphonies. The last three movements are played without pause. The fourth movement (“What the night tells me”) is a setting for contralto of the so-called “Drunken Song” from Friedrich Nietzsche’s novel Also sprach Zarathustra. (Richard Strauss’ tone poem on Zarathustra was completed in the same month as the Third Symphony — August 1896.) “The movement is one of the stillest things in all music,” wrote Deryck Cooke, “with its cry of a night-bird (oboe glissando) and its long-held contralto notes backed by thirds on trombones echoed by piccolos.” Choruses of boys’ and women’s voices sing in the following movement (“What the angels tell me”) of a heavenly vision whose words Mahler borrowed from the Wunderhorn poems. This wondrous music of bells and brightness is briefly clouded in its central section by the thoughts of a repentant sinner, sung by the contralto. Phrases from this music were recalled in the Fourth Symphony. Mahler called the last movement both “What love tells me” and “What God tells me,” and chose to end the Symphony not with the traditional, fast closing music, but rather with an instrumental Adagio of deep feeling and stirring optimism. “For Mahler, all quick music ... represented the flux of the world and human life,” assessed Burnett James, “while slow music, by contrast, enshrined the permanent, the eternal, the higher force.” Of this great finale, Bruno Walter wrote, “In the last movement, words are stilled — for what language can utter heavenly love more powerfully and forcefully than music itself? The Adagio, with its broad, solemn melodic line, is, as a whole — and despite passages of burning pain — eloquent of comfort and grace. It is a single sound of heartfelt and exalted feelings, in which the whole giant structure finds its culmination.” “What is best in music,” Mahler once said, “is not to be found in the notes.” ©2016 Dr. Richard E. Rodda PROGRAM 10 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES O Mensch! Gib Acht! Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht? Ich schlief! Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht! Die Welt ist tief! Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht! Tief ist ihr Weh! Lust, tiefer noch als Herzeleid! Weh spricht: Vergeh! Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit! Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit! c
Oh Man, take heed! What does the deep midnight say? I slept! From a deep dream I was wakened! The world is deep! And deeper than the day imagined! Deep is its grief! Joy, deeper still than heartache! Grief speaks: Away! But all longing craves eternity, raves deep, deep eternity. * * *
Es sungen drei Engel einen süssen Gesang; mit Freuden es selig in dem Himmel klang, sie jauchzten fröhlich auch dabei, dass Petrus sei von Sünden frei.
Three angels were singing a sweet song; with joy it resounded blissfully in heaven; they cried out with joy that Peter was set free from sin.
Und als der Herr Jesus zu Tische sass, mit seinem zwölf Jüngern das Abendmahl ass: Da sprach der Herr Jesus: Was steht du denn hier? Wenn ich dich anseh’, so weinest du mir!
And as the Lord Jesus sat at the table with his twelve disciples and ate the Last Supper, the Lord Jesus said: Why then do you stand here? When I look at you, you weep before me.
Und sollt’ ich nicht weinen, du gütiger Gott? (Du sollst ja nicht weinen!) Ich hab’ übertreten die zehn Gebot. Ich gehe und weine ja bitterlich. (Du sollst ja nicht weinen!) Ach komm und erbarme dich über mich!
And should I not weep, thou merciful God? (No, you should not weep!) I have broken the Ten Commandments. I go my way and weep bitterly. (No, you should not weep!) Ah, come and have mercy on me!
Hast du denn übertreten die zehn Gebot, so fall auf die Knie und bete zu Gott! Liebe nur Gott in alle Zeit! So wirst du erlangen die himmlische Freud’.
If you have broken the Ten Commandments, then fall on your knees and pray to God. Love only God for all time! So will you attain heavenly joy!
Die himmlische Freud’ ist eine selige Stadt, die himmlische Freud’, die kein Ende mehr hat! Die himmlische Freude was Petro bereit’t durch Jesum und Allen zur Seligkeit.
Heavenly joy is a blessed estate, Heavenly joy, that knows no end! Heavenly joy was granted to Peter through Jesus, and for the blessedness of all.
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 11
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