Program Notes
MARY FINSTERER (born 1962)
MYSTERIUM I
WORLD PREMIERE OF AN MSO COMMISSION
The composer writes: MYSTERIUM I is the first movement of a larger work and has been composed for the gala concert for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra 2023 season, Zenith of Life. As the opening work for the evening, it has been composed with the intent to evoke a sense of occasion and celebration.
In the journey of finding inspiration, I came across a vast canon of musical settings of O magnum mysterium. Commemorating the miracle of Christmas, this chance finding seemed timely given the timeframe in which I was composing. Believed to have originated as far back as the 10 th century, this Latin chant has been set to music by numerous composers of note from the Renaissance, including Tomás Luis de Victoria, William Byrd, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Michael Praetorius, and more recently, Francis Poulenc. What these works share is not simply limited to the title of O magnum mysterium (O great mystery), but the purpose they each bring to their music as an evocation of reverence and wonder that augments the text’s innate devotional nature. The music is poised somewhere in the chasm between mystification and exultation, and although each composer’s version is inherently personal and cultural in expression, the shifting harmonies and waves of sound create a quality that transcends culture itself.
I have drawn inspiration from these works and contextualised my response within an orchestral setting. It is important to note, that this piece
can be experienced beyond that of a religious context, perhaps within the listener’s own life; where pivotal moments that may otherwise seem insignificant may lay the groundwork for one’s future or ‘fate’. This idea permeates the music from the powerful opening fanfare gesture featuring the brass and into the more lamenting sounds of a gentle cyclic melody that slowly unfolds in the strings, culminating in a dramatic sequence of harmonies that unifies the whole orchestra at the close of the opening section. The music that follows is faster in tempo and defined by a more dramatic character. Typified by fast arpeggiated figures underneath elongated melodic lines, the counterpoint harks back to a renaissance musical style. The return of the opening section completes the ternary form before eventually falling away with a delicate signing off.
© Mary Finsterer 2023
RYMAN HEALTHCARE SEASON OPENING GALA: ZENITH OF LIFE | 24–25 February 12
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949)
Vier letze Lieder (Four Last Songs)
I. Frühling (Spring)
I. September
III. Beim Schlafengehen (On Going to Sleep)
IV. Im Abendrot (In Sunset’s Glow)
Siobhan Stagg soprano
In his recent biography of Richard Strauss, Michael Kennedy remarks that the Four Last Songs ‘are the music of old age and wisdom and serenity, of death and transfiguration.’ Like Mozart, whom he adored, Strauss maintained a life-long love of the soprano voice, particularly that of Pauline, the wife to whom he was devoted for more than 50 years. In opera and song, and even here in these valedictory works, he wrote music of erotic intensity for it, and in that regard they may be seen as a final flowering of German Romanticism. Just as 19 th century figures like Novalis
Frühling (Spring)
Words by Hermann Hesse
and Wagner conflated eroticism and extinction, here the texts of Hesse and Eichendorff identify the end of life and love with the peaceful embrace of night, dreams and death.
Kennedy reminds us, however, that the works were not conceived as Strauss’ farewell, and that no-one knows if the composer intended them as a songcycle in the strict sense of the term. They were published posthumously as his Four Last Songs, and seized upon by the great Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad who disingenuously let it be known that she was Strauss’ ideal interpreter. Flagstad gave the first performance with Wilhelm Furtwängler at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1950, after which they taken up by Sena Jurinac with Fritz Busch, and Lisa della Casa with Karl Böhm. In these performances the order of the first three songs was reversed from that which Strauss’ publisher Ernst Roth had arbitrarily devised, and which we hear most commonly today.
In placing this song at the beginning of the set, Roth sets up a satisfying arc for the cycle as a whole. Here Hesse’s poem deals with anticipation – specifically that of the poet at the approach of spring – using many of the well-worn tropes of Romantic poetry such as the imagery of trees, blue skies and birdsong. There is also an echo of eroticism in the blissful trembling of the final lines.
Im dämmrigen Grüften
Träumte ich lang
Von deinen Bäumen und blauen Lüften, Von deinem Duft und Vogelgesang.
Nun liegst du erschlossen
In Gleiss und Zier
Von Licht übergossen
Wie ein Wunder vor mir.
Du kennst mich wieder, Du lockest mich zart, es zittert durch all meine Glieder
Deine selige Gegenwart.
In darkling caverns long have I dreamed of your trees and blue skies, your fragrance and bird-songs.
Now you lie before me in shining splendour glowing with light –a miracle.
You greet me again, tempting me gently. My whole being trembles with the bliss of your presence.
RYMAN HEALTHCARE SEASON OPENING GALA: ZENITH OF LIFE | 24–25 February 13
September
Words by Hermann Hesse
In September spring is long past and the anticipation felt by the poet is transformed into a yearning for rest. Both the poem’s imagery and the musical setting, however, represent this as something to be savoured – the falling of golden leaves causes the summer to smile even as it dies, and the music is full of finely detailed activity. In the final moments of the song, Strauss may be remembering his father, as Franz Strauss’ instrument, the horn, has the last word.
Der Garten trauert, Kühl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen.
Der Sommer schauert
Still seinem Ende entgegen.
Golden tropft Blatt um Blatt
Nieder vom hohen Akazienbaum. Sommer lächelt erstaunt und matt
In den sterbenden Gartentraum.
Lange noch bei den Rosen
Bleibt er stehen, sehnt sich nach Ruh. Langsam tut er die Müdegewordenen Augen zu.
Beim Schlafengehen (On Going to Sleep)
Words by Hermann Hesse
The garden mourns. Cool rain sinks on the flowers; the summer shudders as he quietly nears his end.
One by one, the golden leaves fall slowly from the tall acacia tree. Wondering and weary, the summer smiles on the dying garden-dream.
Yearning for rest he lingers long by the roses before he slowly closes his wide, tired eyes.
Yearning for rest is also the theme of Beim Schlafengehen where Hesse further explores the Romantic wish to be free from the bonds of consciousness. Strauss responds with one of his most celebrated inspirations: the violin solo which ecstatically rises to imitate the soul’s soaring into ‘the magic circle of night’.
Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht, Soll mein sehnliches Verlangen
Freundlich die gestirnte Nacht
Wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.
Hände lasst von allem Tun, Stirn vergiss du alles Denken, Alle meine Sinne nun
Wollen sich in Schlummer senken.
Und die Seele unbewacht
Will in freien Flügen schweben, Um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
Tief und tausendfach zu leben.
Now the day has made me tired, may the starry night receive all my fervent longing like a weary child.
Leave your doing, O my hands, brow, forget your thinking! All my senses yearn for rest and would sink into slumber.
Freed from all bonds my soul would like to soar so that it may live deeply and a thousandfold in the magic circle of night.
RYMAN HEALTHCARE SEASON OPENING GALA: ZENITH OF LIFE | 24–25 February 14
Im Abendrot (In Sunset’s Glow)
Words by Joseph von Eichendorff
Strauss set this poem by the great 19 th century poet Eichendorff before the Hesse settings, but it forms a fitting end to the set, and to Strauss’ career. Here the implicit is made plain: that these songs are all in some way about his love for Pauline. The scene is sunset, where an old couple stop to rest after a long and eventful life together amid the splendours of nature. The trilling larks remind us of the promise of spring in the birdsong of Frühling, and as the poet asks whether ‘this’ (and Strauss altered the text from ‘that’) might be death, we hear a reminiscence of the ‘idealism’ theme from Death and Transfiguration. As Norman Del Mar puts it, ‘only the memory of Pauline’s voice could be his companion on these farewell excursions through the music to which his life had been dedicated.’
Wir sind durch Not und Freude Gegangen Hand in Hand, Vom Wandern ruhn wir Nun überm stillen Land.
Rings sich die Täler neigen, Es dunkelt schon die Luft, Zwei Lerchen nur noch steigen Nachträumend in den Duft.
Tritt her und lass sie schwirren, Bald ist es Schlafenszeit, Dass wir uns nicht verirren In dieser Einsamkeit.
O weiter, stiller Friede! So tief im Abendrot. Wie sind wir wandermüde –Ist dies etwa der Tod?
Gordon Kerry © 2001
The text by Hermann Hesse for Frühling, September and Beim Schlafengehen from Four Last Songs (Vier letzte Lieder) by Richard Strauss is reproduced by permission of Hal Leonard Australia exclusive agent for Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd. of London.
Translations by Hedwig Roediger, ABC/Symphony Australia © 1986
Through grief and joy together we have walked, hand in hand. Now let us rest from the journey high above the quiet land.
Around us the valleys are slumbering and darkness veils the sky. Only two larks are still soaring and dreaming as they fly. Come close and let them flutter, soon it is time to sleep lest we should go astray in this dark solitude.
O peace, so wide and silent, deep in the sunset glow! How weary we are with wandering –can this, perchance, be death?
RYMAN HEALTHCARE SEASON OPENING GALA: ZENITH OF LIFE | 24–25 February 15
GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911)
Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor
Part I
Trauermarsch (In gemessenem Schritt. Streng. Wie ein Kondukt) [Funeral march (With measured pace, stern, like a funeral procession)]
Stürmisch bewegt. Mit grösster Vehemenz [Stormy, with utmost vehemence]
Part II
Scherzo (Kräftig, nicht zu schnell) [Strong, not too fast]
Part III
Adagietto (Sehr langsam) [Very slow]
Rondo-Finale (Allegro)
Mahler’s first four symphonies were more or less programmatic in their intention, drawing their inspiration from folk poetry, incorporating themes from songs, and (in all but the first) using the human voice in one or more of the movements. The Fifth, on the other hand, revealed no obvious program and was scored for orchestra alone.
It was written in 1901–02 around the time of Mahler’s meeting with, and rather hasty betrothal to, Alma Schindler. While no period in Mahler’s life could be described as unequivocally happy there is no doubt that the Fifth Symphony was conceived at a time of substantial personal and professional satisfaction. Yet any sign of outward pleasure or optimism tends to be avoided, at least early on in the symphony – pointedly, and notoriously, it begins with a funeral march.
Mahler worked on the first two movements and part of the third during the summer of 1901 (summer being the only opportunity he had to compose because of his conducting duties in winter). The rest of the symphony was
completed the following summer, by which point Alma was very much part of his life.
By the autumn of 1902 the work was complete and Mahler played it for his new wife. In her memoirs she recalled: ‘It was the first time that he played a new work for me. Arm in arm we walked solemnly up to his studio in the woods.’
At the premiere in Cologne on 18 October 1904, the reception was mixed. The great conductor and early champion of Mahler’s music, Bruno Walter, later recalled:
I clearly remember the premiere of the Fifth...for a particular reason: it was the first and, I think, the only time that a performance of a Mahler work under his own baton left me unsatisfied.
Revision after revision ensued, and so thorough was Mahler’s reworking that, while the symphony’s popularity grew, each performance was nevertheless different from the last. ‘The Fifth is an accursed work,’ Mahler wrote. ‘No one understands it!’
The symphony follows Mahler’s principle of ‘progressive tonality’, working its way from C sharp minor to a conclusion in a triumphant D major. It passes through a vast range of moods – ‘passionate, wild, pathetic, sweeping, solemn, gentle, full of all the emotions of the human heart’ in Bruno Walter’s memorable description. A massive work, it is in three parts and five movements.
The opening movement begins with a distinctive trumpet call which recurs as the movement proceeds. As if to belie the claim that the symphony is ‘absolute’ rather than ‘programmatic’ music, the main theme is based on a song by Mahler (Der Tamboursg’sell ) about a drummer boy facing execution. There are two trios: the first in B flat minor with a brief violin theme, the second a quieter section in A minor following the return of the march theme. After
RYMAN HEALTHCARE SEASON OPENING GALA: ZENITH OF LIFE | 24–25 February 16
an impassioned climax, the movement dies away amid echoes of the opening trumpet call.
Mahler leaves no doubt as to the intended mood of the second movement – marked ‘Stormy, with utmost vehemence’. Much of the material derives from that in the first movement and there is a distinct reminiscence of the march rhythms.
The Scherzo’s main thematic material is in the form of a joyous ländler. Ideas tumble over themselves in an inventive contrapuntal display while a slower waltz theme is juxtaposed with the main material. Contrasting trios add a more sombre note and in one of these there occurs a striking obbligato passage for the principal horn.
The Adagietto – arguably the most famous single movement in all the Mahler symphonies – is essentially a song without words. Scored for harps and strings alone, it is closely related to Mahler’s song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world). According to Mahler’s colleague, Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg, the Adagietto was intended as a declaration of love for Alma and was composed shortly after they met. Mengelberg wrote in his score:
Instead of a letter, he sent her this manuscript without further explanation. She understood and wrote back that he should come! Both have told me this… If music is a language, then this is proof. He tells her everything in tones and sounds in music.
The Adagietto gained a wider audience when used in the soundtrack for Visconti’s film Death in Venice.
The Rondo-Finale shares material with each of the previous four movements, particularly with the Funeral March and the Adagietto. Merging elements of fugue and sonata form into a unified
whole, it is a joyous celebration which begins with a series of folk-like figures on solo wind instruments. (The opening of the movement quotes the witty Lob des hohen Verstandes [In Praise of Higher Understanding] from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.) The main rondo theme is first stated on the horns and the other ideas are woven contrapuntally around this. When the main melody from the Adagietto returns it is so transformed with energy that it is practically unrecognisable. The development is elaborate, and the movement as a whole works its way towards the ecstatic brass chorale of the conclusion – as close as the melancholy Mahler ever came to writing an ‘Ode to Joy’.
Martin Buzacott Symphony Australia © 1997
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Newton Family in memory of Rae Rothfield
Cong Gu
The Rosemary Norman Foundation
Ann Blackburn
Andrew and Judy Rogers
Michelle Wood
Glenn Sedgwick
Tiffany Cheng, Shane Hooton
Dr Martin Tymms and Patricia Nilsson
Natasha Thomas
Anonymous
Prudence Davis
HONORARY APPOINTMENTS
Life Members
Mr Marc Besen AC
John Gandel AC and Pauline Gandel AC
Sir Elton John CBE
Harold Mitchell AC
Lady Potter AC CMRI
Jeanne Pratt AC
Michael Ullmer AO and Jenny Ullmer
Anonymous
MSO Ambassador
Geoffrey Rush AC
The MSO honours the memory of Life Members
Mrs Eva Besen AO
John Brockman OAM
The Honourable Alan Goldberg AO QC
Roger Riordan AM
Ila Vanrenen
24 Supporters
MSO ARTISTIC FAMILY
Jaime Martín
Chief Conductor
Xian Zhang
Principal Guest Conductor
Benjamin Northey
Principal Conductor in Residence
Carlo Antonioli
Cybec Assistant Conductor Fellow
Sir Andrew Davis
Conductor Laureate
Hiroyuki Iwaki †
Conductor Laureate (1974–2006)
Warren Trevelyan-Jones
MSO Chorus Director
Siobhan Stagg
2023 Soloist in Residence
Gondwana Voices
2023 Ensemble in Residence
Christian Li
Young Artist in Association
Mary Finsterer
2023 Composer in Residence
Melissa Douglas
2023 Cybec Young Composer in Residence
Christopher Moore
Creative Producer, MSO Chamber
Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO
MSO First Nations Creative Chair
Dr Anita Collins
Creative Chair for Learning and Engagement
Artistic Ambassadors
Tan Dun
Lu Siqing
MSO BOARD
Chairman
David Li AM
Co-Deputy Chairs
Di Jameson
Helen Silver AO
Managing Director
Sophie Galaise
Board Directors
Shane Buggle
Andrew Dudgeon AM
Danny Gorog
Lorraine Hook
Margaret Jackson AC
David Krasnostein AM
Gary McPherson
Hyon-Ju Newman
Glenn Sedgwick
Company Secretary
Oliver Carton
The MSO relies on your ongoing philanthropic support to sustain our artists, and support access, education, community engagement and more. We invite our supporters to get close to the MSO through a range of special events.
The MSO welcomes your support at any level. Donations of $2 and over are tax deductible, and supporters are recognised as follows:
$500+ (Overture)
$1,000+ (Player)
$2,500+ (Associate)
$5,000+ (Principal)
$10,000+ (Maestro)
$20,000+ (Impresario)
$50,000+ (Virtuoso)
$100,000+ (Platinum)
25 Supporters
Thank you to our Partners
Partners
Partner Premier Partners
Partners
Partner
Partner
Partners Quest Southbank Bows for Strings Ernst & Young
Training Partner
Government
Principal
Supporting
Education
Venue
Major
Orchestral
