BRUCKNER's FOURTH SYMPHONY

Friday, October 4, 2024 at 7:30 pm

Saturday, October 5, 2024 at 7:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Ken-David Masur, conductor

PROGRAM

CLARICE ASSAD. Nhanderú

GUSTAV MAHLER

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a Wayfarer]

I. Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht

II. Ging heut’ Morgen über’s Feld

III. Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer

IV. Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz Dashon Burton, bass-baritone

INTERMISSION

ANTON BRUCKNER

Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, WAB 104, “Romantic” [1878/1880 version ed. Robert Haas]

I. Bewegt, nicht zu schnell

II. Andante, quasi allegretto

III. Scherzo: Bewegt – Trio: Nicht zu schnell

IV. Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell

The length of this concert is approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes. All programs are subject to change.

Guest Artist Biographies

DASHON BURTON

Hailed as an artist “alight with the spirit of the music” (Boston Globe), three-time Grammy winning bass-baritone Dashon Burton has established a vibrant career, appearing regularly throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Burton’s 2024.25 season begins with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl led by Gustavo Dudamel. Highlights throughout the season include returns to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for the second season as artistic partner for Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and later in the season for Bach’s Ich habe genug, both led by Ken-David Masur; his Boston Symphony subscription debut with Michael Tilson Thomas’s Walt Whitman Songs led by Teddy Abrams; his Toronto Symphony debut in the Mozart Requiem led by Jukka-Pekka Saraste; the Brahms-Glanert Serious Songs and the Mozart Requiem with the St. Louis Symphony led by Stephane Deneve; the Mozart Requiem with the Minnesota Orchestra and Thomas Søndergård; and Handel’s Messiah with the National Symphony led by Masaki Suzuki.

Burton’s 2023.24 season included multiple appearances with Michael Tilson Thomas, including a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the San Francisco Symphony and Copland’s Old American Songs with the New World Symphony. Burton also performed Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Washington Bach Consort, Handel’s Messiah with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the title role in Sweeney Todd at Vanderbilt University. With the Cleveland Orchestra, Burton sang in a semi-staged version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and he joined the Milwaukee Symphony and Ken-David Masur for three subscription weeks as their artistic partner.

A multiple award-winning singer, Burton won his second Grammy Award in March 2021 for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album with his performance featured in Dame Ethyl Smyth’s masterwork The Prison with The Experiential Orchestra (Chandos). As an original member of the groundbreaking vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, he won his first Grammy Award in 2013 for their inaugural recording of all new commissions and his third Grammy Award in 2024 for their most recent recording, Rough Magic, featuring more new commissions from Caroline Shaw, William Brittelle, Peter Shin, and Eve Beglarian.

His other recordings include Songs of Struggle & Redemption: We Shall Overcome (Acis); the Grammy Award-nominated recording of Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road (Naxos); Holocaust, 1944 by Lori Laitman (Acis); and Caroline Shaw’s The Listeners with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. His album of spirituals garnered high praise and was singled out by the New York Times as “profoundly moving … a beautiful and lovable disc.”

Burton received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College and Conservatory, and a Master of Music degree from Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music. He is an assistant professor of voice at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

Dashon Burton appears by arrangement with Colbert Artists Management, Inc., 180 Elm Street, Ste I #221, Pittsfield, MA 01201-6552.

Program notes by Elaine Schmidt

CLARICE ASSAD

Born 9 February 1978; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Nhanderú

Composed: 2013Nhanderú

First performance: 21 September 2013; David Alan Miller, conductor; Albany Symphony Orchestra

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; piccolo; 2 oboes; 2 clarinet; 2 bassoons; contrabassoon; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 2 trombones; bass trombone; timpani; percussion (bass drum, bird call, brake drum, cabasa, congas, drum set, large suspended cymbals, marimba, plastic blocks, rainstick, sizzle cymbal, tam-tam, thunder sheet, tubular bells, vibraphone, wood block, wind chimes, wood wind chimes); strings

Approximate duration: 8 minutes

GUSTAV MAHLER

Born 7 July 1860; Kaliště, Bohemia (now Czech Republic [there was no Czech Republic in Mahler’s lifetime])

Died 18 May 1911; Vienna, Austria

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a Wayfarer] Composed: December 1884-1885; revised 1885-1886

First performance: 16 March 1896; Gustav Mahler, conductor; Anton Sistermans, baritone; Berlin Philharmonic

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (3rd doubling on piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling on English horn); 3 clarinets (3rd doubling on bass clarinet); 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, tam-tam, triangle); harp; strings

Approximate duration: 17 minutes

Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (“Songs of a Wayfarer”) was the first of his three major song cycles to be published. Today, it is one of his most widely known works and is sung by male and female singers. Much about the cycle’s composition remains unknown, but we do know that the set of four songs was originally a set of six, and that it is somewhat autobiographical, expressing despair over a lost love. She was a singer who studied piano with Mahler when he took a conducting job with the opera in Kassel, Germany. Mahler wrote both the lyrics and the music. Most scholars believe that Mahler began working on the cycle in December 1884 and finished sometime in 1885. We know he was 23 when he landed a conducting post with the opera in Kassel, Germany. It was his fifth conducting job in three years, as he moved from job to job and town to town, like an apprentice would have, gaining experience while learning his “trade.”

The English translation of the cycle’s title is not accurate. The word “journeyman,” meaning an apprentice who moves from place to place learning his trade, is much more accurate than “wayfarer.” Mahler wrote the songs for voice and piano, revising them extensively, likely in 1885 and 1886. Sometime in the early 1890s, he orchestrated the songs. Most scholars believe the songs were debuted on 16 March 1896, by the Berlin Philharmonic and Dutch baritone Anton Sistermans, performing Mahler’s orchestrated version.

The Songs:

1. Describes heartbreak of losing the woman he loved to someone else. Even the beauty of nature can’t soothe him.

2. The happiest of the songs, it speaks of finding joy in the beauty of nature. But it ends with the singer remembering his lost love and sliding back into despair.

3. Everything reminds the singer of his lost love. He compares her to a knife blade that pierces his heart.

4. The singer cannot stop thinking of his lost love’s beautiful, blue eyes. He sprawls under a linden tree, with blossoms falling on him, regretting everything about their relationship.

ANTON BRUCKNER

Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, WAB 104, “Romantic” [1878/1880 version ed. Robert Haas]

Composed: 2 January – 22 November 1874; revised 1878-1888

First performance: 20 February 1881; Hans Richter, conductor; Vienna Philharmonic

Last MSO performance: 26 January 2013; Edo de Waart, conductor

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 70 minutes

Paradoxically, Austrian composer and organ virtuoso Anton Bruckner, who was no stranger to facing huge audiences, was paralyzingly shy and suffered terribly from a severe lack of confidence. These issues led to what is known today as “the Bruckner problem.” Doubtful about the quality of his work, Bruckner made frequent revisions to already completed works. Several of his friends also revised some of his works. As a result, we are left with a jumble of versions of his music, including multiple editions of his first, third, and fourth symphonies, and a host of recordings made from those various editions that have further muddied the waters. Bruckner wrote 11 symphonies, although two of his earliest symphonic efforts are not included in the numbering sequence for the symphonies. The various revisions and editions of his symphonies have generated the joking statement that he actually wrote about 30 symphonies.

Bruckner migrated to Vienna in 1860 and, like Johannes Brahms, did not begin writing symphonies until relatively late in his life. But unlike Brahms, who found Richard Wagner’s music too dense and too heavily chromatic, Bruckner appreciated Wagner’s chromaticism as well as his fondness for brass passages, although he had little use for a Wagner’s idea of “music of the future.” Music critic Eduard Hanslick, who loved Brahms’s music and strongly disliked Wagner’s, felt that Bruckner’s music was quite like Wagner’s and wrote a good deal to that effect. Bruckner was eventually dubbed “the Wagner of the symphonic world,” a useful comparison for listeners from both the Brahms and Wagner camps.

Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, the only of his symphonies he subtitled (“Romantic”), is programmatic in nature, telling a story that Bruckner referred to more in earlier versions of the piece than in the later version. He described knights riding out of a medieval city, soon surrounded by nature — forest murmurs and birdsongs. He called the second movement a “song, prayer, serenade,” and referred to the third movement as a hunting scene. Early versions of the piece label the fourth movement “rainy weather” or “carnival.” Later versions, which contain a much-altered fourth movement, have no such headings.

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a Wayfarer] Composed: December 1884-1885; revised 1885-1886

First performance: 16 March 1896; Gustav Mahler, conductor; Anton Sistermans, baritone; Berlin Philharmonic

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a Wayfarer] Composed: December 1884-1885; revised 1885-1886

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a Wayfarer] Composed: December 1884-1885; revised 1885-1886

First performance: 16 March 1896; Gustav Mahler, conductor; Anton Sistermans, baritone; Berlin Philharmonic