Singapore Symphony Orchestra Jan 2023

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CHLOE CHUA PLAYS MOZART 4

12 & 13 Jan 2023, Thu & Fri

Victoria Concert Hall

MAHLER’S WUNDERHORN WITH HANS GRAF AND SUMI HWANG

20 Jan 2023, Fri

Esplanade Concert Hall

A

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Autograph session A

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Since its founding in 1979, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) has been Singapore’s flagship orchestra, touching lives through classical music and providing the heartbeat of the cultural scene in the cosmopolitan city-state.

In addition to its subscription series concerts, the orchestra is well-loved for its outdoor and community appearances, and its significant role educating the young people of Singapore. The SSO has also earned an international reputation for its orchestral virtuosity, having garnered sterling reviews for its overseas tours and many successful recordings. In 2021, the SSO clinched third place in the prestigious Orchestra of the Year Award by Gramophone.

In July 2022, the SSO appointed renowned Austrian conductor Hans Graf as its Music Director, the third in the orchestra’s history after Lan Shui (1997–2019) and Choo Hoey (1979–1996). Prior to this, Hans Graf served as Chief Conductor from 2020, leading the SSO in keeping music alive during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The SSO makes its performing home at the 1,800-seat state-of-the-art Esplanade Concert Hall. More intimate works, as well as outreach and community performances

take place at the 673-seat Victoria Concert Hall, the Home of the SSO. The orchestra performs over 60 concerts a year, and its versatile repertoire spans all-time favourites and orchestral masterpieces to exciting cutting-edge premieres. The SSO launched its digital concert hall, SSOLOUNGE, in 2021. Bridging the musical traditions of East and West, Singaporean and Asian musicians and composers are regularly showcased in the concert season.

Beyond Singapore, the SSO has performed in Europe, Asia and the United States. In May 2016 the SSO was invited to perform at the Dresden Music Festival and the Prague Spring International Music Festival. This successful five-city tour of Germany and Prague also included the SSO’s second performance at the Berlin Philharmonie. In 2014 the SSO’s debut at the 120th BBC Proms in London received critical acclaim in the major UK newspapers The Guardian and The Telegraph. The SSO has also performed in China on multiple occasions.

The SSO has released more than 50 recordings, with over 30 on the BIS label. The most recent critically acclaimed albums include a Rachmaninoff box set (2021), Richard Strauss’ “Rosenkavalier and Other Works” (2020), and three Debussy discs “La Mer”, “Jeux” and “Nocturnes”. A Four Seasons album and a complete Mozart Violin Concerto cycle with Chloe Chua and Hans Graf will be released in the near future.

The SSO has also collaborated with such great artists as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Joe Hisaishi, Neeme Järvi, Okko Kamu, Hannu Lintu, Andrew Litton, Lorin Maazel, Martha Argerich, Ray Chen, Diana Damrau, Stephen Hough, Janine Jansen, Leonidas Kavakos,

Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham and Krystian Zimerman.

The SSO is part of the Singapore Symphony Group, which also manages the Singapore Symphony Choruses, the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, and the VCHpresents chamber music series, the Singapore International Piano Festival and the biennial National Piano & Violin Competition.

The mission of the Group is to create memorable shared experiences with music. Through the SSO and its affiliated performing groups, we spread the love for music, nurture talent and enrich our diverse communities.

HANS GRAF Music Director

HANS GRAF

Music Director

With the distinguished Austrian conductor Hans Graf, "a brave new world of musicmaking under inspired direction" (The Straits Times) began at the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, where he was appointed Chief Conductor from the 2020/21 season, and Music Director from the 2022/23 season.

Graf was formerly Music Director of the Houston Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Basque National Orchestra and the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. He is a frequent guest with major orchestras around the world including the orchestras of Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Vienna, Leipzig Gewandhaus, DSO Berlin, Dresden, Royal Concertgebouw, Oslo, Hallé, London, Royal Philharmonic, the Bavarian, Danish and Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestras, Budapest Festival, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Russian National, and the orchestras of Melbourne, Sydney, Seoul, Hong Kong and Malaysian Philharmonic. Graf has led operas in the opera houses of the Vienna State Opera, Munich, Berlin, Paris, Strasbourg, Rome and Zurich. In 2014 he was awarded the Österreichischer Musiktheaterpreis for Strauss’s Die Feuersnot at the famed Vienna Volksoper, where he returned in 2021 to lead Rosenkavalier.

Hans Graf's extensive discography includes all the symphonies of Mozart and Schubert, the complete orchestral works of Dutilleux, and the world-premiere recording of Zemlinsky’s Es war einmal. Graf’s recording of Berg’s Wozzeck with the Houston Symphony won the GRAMMY and ECHO Klassik awards for best opera recording.

Born near Linz in 1949, Graf is Professor Emeritus for Orchestral Conducting at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg. For his services to music, he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre de la Légion d'Honneur by the French government, and the Grand Decoration of Honour of the Republic of Austria.

© BRYAN VAN DER BEEK

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

Chloe Chua

Chloe Chua (b. 2007) shot to international stardom after winning the joint 1st Prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists.

The young star from Singapore has also garnered the top prize at the 24th Andrea Postacchini Violin Competition, 3rd prize at the 2017 Zhuhai International Mozart Competition, as well as accolades at the Thailand International Strings Competition (Junior Category Grand Prize) and the Singapore National Piano and Violin Competition (1st Prize, Junior 2017, 3rd Prize, Junior 2015).

Her stunning musicality despite her young age has captured the hearts of audiences around the world, and her performances have taken her to concert halls and orchestras across the U.S.A., U.K., Italy, Germany, Saudi Arabia, China, Thailand and Singapore, in festivals such as the Copenhagen Summer Festival, New Virtuosi Queenswood Mastercourse, Atlanta Festival Academy and the Singapore Violin Festival.

For the 2022/23 season, Chloe has been named Artist-InResidence at the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, performing several concerts and recording projects across 2022 and 2023. Upcoming albums include The Four Seasons and the complete Mozart Violin Concertos with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Hans Graf. Her previous recordings include a Piazzolla album with guitarist Kevin Loh.

Chloe has been with Singapore’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) School of Young Talents since age 4, and is currently under the tutelage of Yin Ke, leader of their strings programme.

Chloe performs on a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Milan, 1753, on generous loan from the Rin Collection.

“ Chloe is not just Wunderkind, she is a great young artist with a fantastic future.”

– HANS GRAF, MUSIC DIRECTOR

SINGAPORE SYMPHONY CHORUSES

N u r t u r e y o u r b r i l l i a n c e , b e i n s p i r e d b y p a s s i o n a n d c e l e b r a t e t h e b e s t o f c h o r a l e x c e l l e n c e

SUMI HWANG

soprano

Born in Korea, Sumi Hwang was seen by a global audience of 300 million TV viewers when she gave a soaring rendition of the Olympic Anthem at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in February 2018. The New York praised the Korean soprano as “arguably the star of the night”.

Following undergraduate and graduate degrees at Seoul National University, Sumi attended the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich where she studied with Frieder Lang, Donald Sulzen and Céline Dutilly. She has numerous competition successes in Salzburg and Germany, and was also awarded the 2014 Emmerich Smola Förderpreis presented by the German TV network SWR. In 2014, Sumi won the Grand Prize in the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. In the same year, she sang in a Christmas Concert for the President of Germany along with soprano Diana Damrau and the Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Patrick Lange and broadcast by the ZDF.

Sumi appears regularly as a soloist on the concert podium and has sung in Dvořák’s in Munich’s Herkulessaal, Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Munich Symphony Orchestra, selected concert arias by Mozart with the BBC Symphony

Orchestra, and also in Unsuk Chin’s Puzzles and Games from Alice in Wonderland premiered in 2017 under Christoph Eschenbach.

Concert engagements this season include Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem and the Japanese premiere of Daniel Schnyder’s The Revelation of St. John with the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra under Sebastian Weigle, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä.

Since September 2022, Sumi Hwang holds a professorship for solo singing at the Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

© OXANA GURYANOVA

The Orchestra

HANS GRAF

Music Director

RODOLFO BARRÁEZ

Associate Conductor

CHOO HOEY

Conductor Emeritus

LAN SHUI

Conductor Laureate

EUDENICE PALARUAN

Choral Director

WONG LAI FOON

Choirmaster

FIRST VIOLIN

(Position vacant) Concertmaster, GK Goh Chair Kong Zhao Hui1

Associate Concertmaster Chan Yoong-Han2 Fixed Chair Cao Can* Chen Da Wei Duan Yu Ling Foo Say Ming Jin Li Kong Xianlong Cindy Lee Karen Tan William Tan Wei Zhe Ye Lin* Zhang Si Jing*

SECOND VIOLIN

Tseng Chieh-An Principal Michael Loh Associate Principal Nikolai Koval* Sayuri Kuru Hai-Won Kwok Chikako Sasaki* Margit Saur Shao Tao Tao Wu Man Yun* Xu Jueyi* Yeo Teow Meng Yin Shu Zhan* Zhao Tian*

VIOLA

Manchin Zhang Principal Guan Qi Associate Principal Gu Bing Jie* Fixed Chair Hyunjae Bae Joyce Huang Marietta Ku Luo Biao Julia Park Shui Bing Janice Tsai Dandan Wang Yang Shi Li

CELLO

Ng Pei-Sian Principal, The HEAD Foundation Chair Yu Jing Associate Principal Guo Hao Fixed Chair Chan Wei Shing Jamshid Saydikarimov Song Woon Teng Wang Yan Wu Dai Dai Zhao Yu Er

DOUBLE BASS

Yang Zheng Yi Associate Principal Karen Yeo Fixed Chair

Olga Alexandrova Jacek Mirucki Guennadi Mouzyka Wang Xu

FLUTE

Jin Ta Principal, Stephen Riady Chair

Evgueni Brokmiller Associate Principal

Roberto Alvarez Miao Shanshan

PICCOLO

Roberto Alvarez Assistant Principal

OBOE

Rachel Walker Principal

Pan Yun Associate Principal Carolyn Hollier Elaine Yeo

COR ANGLAIS

Elaine Yeo Associate Principal

CLARINET

Ma Yue Principal

Li Xin Associate Principal Liu Yoko

Tang Xiao Ping

BASS CLARINET

Tang Xiao Ping Assistant Principal

BASSOON

Liu Chang Associate Principal Christoph Wichert Zhao Ying Xue

CONTRABASSOON

Zhao Ying Xue Assistant Principal

HORN

Gao Jian Associate Principal

Jamie Hersch Associate Principal Marc-Antoine Robillard Associate Principal Hoang Van Hoc

TRUMPET

Jon Paul Dante Principal David Smith Associate Principal Lau Wen Rong

TROMBONE

Allen Meek Principal Damian Patti Associate Principal Samuel Armstrong

BASS TROMBONE Wang Wei Assistant Principal

TUBA Tomoki Natsume Principal

TIMPANI

Christian Schiøler Principal Mario Choo

PERCUSSION

Jonathan Fox Principal Mark Suter Associate Principal Mario Choo Lim Meng Keh

HARP

Gulnara Mashurova Principal

With deep appreciation to the Rin Collection for their generous loan of string instruments.

Kong Zhao Hui performs on a J.B. Guadagnini of Milan, c. 1750, donated by the National Arts Council, Singapore, with the support of Far East Organization and Lee Foundation.

Chan Yoong-Han performs on a David Tecchler, Fecit Roma An. D. 1700, courtesy of Mr G K Goh. Musicians listed alphabetically by family name rotate their seats on a per programme basis.

Guest Musicians

FIRST VIOLIN

Markus Tomasi Guest Concertmaster

FLUTE Wang Tong

BASSOON

Yuan Tianwei Guest Principal

TRUMPET

Nuttakamon Supattranont

HORN

Bryan Chong Alexander Oon

HARP Jana Ang Fries

FIRST VIOLIN

Markus Tomasi Guest Concertmaster

Lim Shue Churn

SECOND VIOLIN

Ikuko Takahashi

CELLO

Lin Juan Wang Zihao

DOUBLE BASS

Joan Perarnau Garriga Guest Principal

Julian Li

FLUTE Wang Tong

BASSOON

Kazunari Suzuki Guest Principal

TRUMPET

Nuttakamon Supattranont

HORN

Austin Larson Guest Principal

Bryan Chong

Alexander Oon

HARP

Fontaine Liang

CHLOE CHUA PLAYS MOZART 4 | 12 & 13 JAN 2023

MAHLER’S WUNDERHORN WITH HANS GRAF AND SUMI HWANG | 20 JAN 2023

We look forward to seeing you in the air again

An elevated experience awaits on board the world’s most awarded airline

CHLOE CHUA PLAYS MOZART 4 MUSICAL DREAMS

12 & 13 Jan 2023, Thu & Fri

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Hans Graf Music Director

Chloe Chua Artist-In-Residence/violin*

DEBUSSY MOZART

Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ("Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun")

Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major, K. 218*

Intermission

BIZET

Victoria Concert Hall 10 mins 26 mins 20 mins 27 mins

Symphony No. 1 in C major

Concert Duration: approximately 1 hr 40 mins (with 20 mins intermission)

MESSAGE FROM TOTE BOARD GROUP

Dear Friends and Honoured Guests

It gives us great pleasure to welcome you to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s (SSO) first performance at the Victoria Concert Hall, Home of the SSO for 2023. SSO has been a key player in Singapore’s arts and culture landscape, touching many lives with their diverse group of talented musicians.

We are proud to showcase an evening of classical music with SSO Music Director Hans Graf and Singapore’s brightest violin star, Chloe Chua. Aged only 16 but already a multi-awardwinning violinist beloved by an international audience, Chloe is the Singapore Symphony’s youngest-ever Artist-In-Residence. Be inspired tonight by Chloe’s masterful rendition of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4.

We celebrate the return of in-person concert performances, and look forward to more such events in the future.

I would like to thank you for joining us this evening. Please enjoy the wonderful musical experience.

Mrs Mildred Tan Chairman Tote Board

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918)

Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894)

Debussy’s Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune ("Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun") opens with a now-iconic solo flute melody, a melody which prompted the 20th-century composer Pierre Boulez to say: “the flute of the faun brought new breath to the art of music”.

The Prelude was written in 1894 and was inspired by a poem by the French symbolist poet, Stephane Mallarmé. Almost impossible to translate, Mallarmé’s poem attempts to capture the thoughts, feelings and desires of a faun – a mythical creature – on a hot afternoon on a Sicilian hillside.

The tritone was the perfect musical symbol, and Mallarmé’s poem the perfect setting for Debussy to push the boundaries of traditional tonality further than ever before. The famous opening is followed by a pause – six beats of silence, perhaps for the audience to wonder which key the music is in!

The melody moves between different woodwind instruments as the accompaniment travels through an array of different tonalities, just as Mallarmé’s poem provides fleeting glimpses of the thoughts of the faun (it’s interesting to note that Debussy’s piece contains 110 bars of music, corresponding exactly to the 110 lines in Mallarme’s poem).

From the very beginning, Debussy’s piece denies the structures of traditional tonality. The opening flute melody moves between the notes C-sharp and G, creating a tritone, the interval which Leonard Bernstein called “the most unstable interval there is, the absolute negation of tonality”. A tritone has no “home key”, it can’t resolve and doesn’t fit comfortably into the Western system of tonality: for that reason it was named diabolus in musica by the early Christian church and banned from use in music.

Only in the final moments does Debussy reveal that the home key of the piece is E major. But as Bernstein said: “It’s an essay in E major, actually. [But] the faun was pointing… toward total ambiguity, one more step and you’re there, in senseless chromaticism.”

Instrumentation

3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, crotales, 2 harps, strings

World Premiere 22 Dec 1894, Paris

First performed by SSO 26 Sep 1980

Programme note by Elizabeth Davis

“the flute of the faun brought new breath to the art of music”

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

(1756–1791)

Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major, K. 218 (1775)

Allegro

II III

Andante cantabile Rondeau. Andante grazioso

While we tend to think of Mozart sitting at the piano, it is worth remembering that in his younger days he was as much a soloist on the violin as on the keyboard – unsurprising, when one recalls that his father Leopold was an important figure in the violin world.

Composed in 1775, which saw the later four of his five violin concerti completed, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 opens with a sharp arpeggiated fanfare before the soloist enters in its highest register, like a child play-marching and singing along to soldiers in parade. Though full of vigorous material, the Allegro reflects Mozart’s characteristic lightness and charm.

The Andante cantabile is radiant and serene, evoking late summer afternoons in Salzburg, with the fading sunshine filtered through leafy canopies. After the orchestral introduction, the soloist takes centrestage, spinning singing melodies almost uninterrupted, exploring the entire range from bright higher strings to rich lower strings.

In the 18th century there was a longing among European aristocrats for “the simple life”, resulting in the curious phenomenon of palace gardens seeing rustic cottages being constructed, in which the nobility would play at being farmers and shepherds, with domestic animals being brought in for their excellencies to milk and herd. One can only imagine what the actual servants thought of this. It is in this spirit that we may view the

final Rondo, courtly and posed, where an exaggerated gavotte (a French folk dance) turns up halfway through, followed by a bagpipe dance complete with drones on the violin. Nevertheless, before the end, Mozart takes us back to his elegant style, as if returning to noble hallways of gilded mirrors after an afternoon of agricultural cosplaying.

Instrumentation 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings

World Premiere Unknown

First performed by SSO 3 Jul 1981 (Yossi Zivoni, violin)

GEORGES BIZET (1838–1875)

Symphony No. 1 in C major (1855)

I II III IV

Allegro vivo

Adagio Scherzo. Allegro vivace Finale. Allegro vivace

A wildly successful work can occasionally be a sort of curse for a composer—for example the French composer Georges Bizet is best known for his opera Carmen, almost to the exclusion of the rest of his output. One such work is his Symphony in C major, written over the space of a month as an assignment at the age of 17 while he was a student of Charles Gounod at the Paris Conservatoire. Having turned this piece of homework in, Bizet appears to have forgotten about it and never mentioned it again during his lifetime. What was in this homework?

The work follows closely the four-movement classical symphony form, with the first and last movements in sonata form. The forces required are strings and wind, with trumpets and timpani, without trombones or tubas—essentially Mozartean. If the young student had intended to earn more marks by closely imitating his teacher’s style, he must have succeeded, for the work bears many similarities and references to Gounod’s Symphony in D, even quoting from it. Bizet had been deeply involved with Gounod in realising a two-piano transcription of the latter’s Symphony in D, so its influence is understandable, and Bizet may have consciously emulated it as an act of homage. Bizet would later write to his former teacher “You were the beginning of my life as an artist. I spring from you. You are the cause, I am the consequence.”

The work begins with an arresting opening chord, then immediately goes into Allegro vivo and gives us a cheerful three-note motif that is developed before the oboe gives us the gentler second theme. After both themes have been developed adequately, a recapitulation occurs, and we come to the end of the textbook first movement.

A slow Adagio movement follows, lyrical and seductively outlined by the oboe, where the 17-year-old Bizet shows off his mastery of colour and harmony, giving us a foretaste of the sharply bittersweet cool sensuousness of Carmen to come eighteen years later. Not content to be merely melodic, he manages to weave in an industrious fugue starting from the strings, before the oboe re-enters to bring the party to a close. The third movement is a Minuet marked Scherzo: Allegro vivace, boisterously dancelike, with a rustic trio marked by open fifths in the low strings while woodwinds stomp around above them.

The Allegro vivace final movement begins with a burst of sheer energy from the strings, a sort of perpetual motion that spins on, before the winds announce the second theme accompanied by pizzicato strings, giving us the perfect image of a thrilling ride through graceful and charming country landscapes. All through this exciting romp, our 17-year-old guide never loses his mastery of the material.

Yet for all the developed maturity of the work, it was never performed during Bizet’s lifetime and was never mentioned by him. Perhaps even though it surpasses Gounod’s work, he considered it too imitative to be presented publicly. Perhaps its obscurity was due to the fact that the Paris Conservertoire circles considered the symphony merely an academic form and focussed on other genres. Perhaps had Bizet lived beyond his short lifespan of 36 years, he might have revisited it and brought it to light. At any rate, the work remained unplayed, unknown and unpublished during his lifetime. It was not until 1933 that its existence became widely known, leading to a first performance and publishing in 1935, and a first recording in 1937. It has remained part of the standard orchestral repertoire ever since.

Programme notes by Edward C. Yong

Instrumentation

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings

World Premiere 26 Feb 1935, Basel, Switzerland

First performed by SSO 11 Mar 1980

Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting (1855) by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

CHLOE

SSO GALA: MAHLER’S WUNDERHORN WITH HANS GRAF AND SUMI HWANG SONGS OF IMAGINATION AND POETRY

20 Jan 2023, Fri

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Hans Graf Music Director

Sumi Hwang soprano*

Esplanade Concert Hall 23 mins 14 mins 20 mins 33 mins

Tod und Verklärung (“Death and Transfiguration”), Op. 24 Selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Rückert Lieder* Intermission Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90

Concert Duration: approximately 1 hr 45 mins (with 20 mins intermission)

RICHARD STRAUSS

(1864–1949)

Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24 (1888–1889)

It is often written that Strauss burst upon the German musical establishment as a bright youngster full of promise with his Don Juan of 1889. That statement holds water in the sense that he did indeed get his first taste of real critical acclaim with that work, but in truth he had slogged quite hard to get to that stage, with a failed first opera under his belt and a lot of work conducting various orchestras. He had also written quite a lot of chamber and concertante music before this piece, with his now-famous sonatas for cello and for violin, and concerti for violin, for horn, and for piano (Burleske).

With sure dramatic timing, Strauss writes music to fit the artist’s recollections of his childhood (a lyrical G major), various coming-of-age struggles (a march-like theme), the climax of attaining success, and the decline into old age and the final passing into transcendence and transfiguration (the glorious C major finale). The harmony and counterpoint are handled with a mastery well beyond Strauss’s young years, no doubt garnered from his operatic experience.

The music of Tod und Verklärung (“Death and Transfiguration”) can be viewed as Strauss deliberately taking a step back from the brash confidence of Don Juan. Where the latter piece starts with an onrushing rising figure and a huge tutti, this one opens with a hesitant, syncopated accompanimental figure, sombre in mood, clearly a sort of yearning for something to come. We can hear the 24-year-old composer already reaching for the profound; his friend Ritter provided a general scenario for the whole work, which involved depicting the death of an artist.

When the work was first premiered in 1890, it was met with rapturous praise. Strauss had cemented his credentials as one of the foremost young composers; Tod und Verklärung was widely regarded as being full of noble sentiment, and it quickly established itself as a standard repertory piece, placing Strauss himself as a master of the symphonic poem. It was, of course, not without its naysayers, with the Englishman Ernest Newman quipping that it was a piece “too spectacular, too brilliantly lit” to die to, though Strauss would have the final word. As he lay dying in 1949, after war had ravaged Europe and his family, he said to his daughter-in-law Alice: “It is a funny thing… but dying is just the way I composed it in Tod und Verklärung.”

Instrumentation

3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, tam-tam, 2 harps, strings

World Premiere 21 Jun 1890, Eisenach, Germany

First performed by SSO 2 Apr 1993

“It is a funny thing… but dying is just the way I composed it in Tod und Verklärung”

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911)

From Des Knaben Wunderhorn

- Wer hat dies Liedel erdacht? (“Who made up this little song?”)

- Verlorne Müh’! (“Wasted Effort”)

- Rheinlegendchen (“Little Rhine Legend”)

From Rückert Lieder

- Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (“I am lost to the world”)

Gustav Mahler’s composing career was inexorably tied up with the idea of voice and song. Even when he wrote purely instrumental works, many of his finest melodies have poetry as an underpinning (like the luminous Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony). In the early part of his career he was known for writing a lot of songs, and indeed, a lot of the music in the great First Symphony as we know it today was pre-empted by a cantata-of-sorts called Das klagende Lied (“Song of Lamentation”).

The other source for that symphony was a collection of German folk poems edited by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, titled Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Boy’s Magic Horn”). In it was a rich collection of folklore, comprising much of the basis of German Romanticism: love poems, songs about travel and wandering over long distances, pastoral matters, soldiers and war, and even children’s songs. Not only did Mahler mine this collection of poems for a cycle of a dozen songs titled, suitably, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the poems also made it into the huge choral symphonies that were to follow (the Second and Third) and the sung finale of the Fourth, leading the first four symphonies to be also known as the Wunderhorn symphonies.

The first three songs tonight are from the aforementioned Lieder cycle, and Mahler uses all the skill he has to do some particularly delightful bits of word-painting. All three are written in a folk-dance 3/8 time signature, though Mahler deliberately stretches phrases to add unpredictability as a real storyteller would.

Wer hat dies Liedel erdacht? (“Who made up this little song?”) is a love song, written in a pastoral style, simulating the yodelling of shepherd boys and girls, while Verlorne Müh’! (“Wasted Effort”) is a flirty backand-forth that switches between major and minor frequently, as if the music itself was doing the pleading. These songs are also orchestrated to recall the pastoral, with Mahler’s use of open fifths sounding like horn calls and the oboe resembling a folk pipe.

Rheinlegendchen (“Little Rhine Legend”) is in a direct “story mode”, with a poetic retelling of an old German legend. Here, even though the text is very regular, Mahler’s use of chromatic key changes and additional short interludes really bring the repeated images to life, changing with meaning as the story progresses. This musical technique was something he honed in later song cycles,

MAHLER’S WUNDERHORN WITH HANS GRAF AND SUMI

even extending to the much more serious and profound Rückert Lieder of 15 years later.

In Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (“I am lost to the world”), the singer declares in an astonishingly long breath, while the sparse orchestration languishes underneath, the cor anglais solo sounding like a much older and wiser version of the shepherdboy pipes. The music of tender melancholy leaves behind the world’s tumult, resigned in bliss to live alone in heaven, in love, in song.

Programme notes by Thomas Ang

Wer hat dies Liedel erdacht?

Dort oben am Berg in dem hohen Haus, da guckt ein fein’s lieb’s Mädel heraus. Es ist nicht dort daheime! Es ist des Wirts sein Töchterlein! Es wohnet auf grüner Heide!

Mein Herzle is’ wundt! Komm, Schätzle, mach’s g’sund! Dein’ schwarzbraune Auglein, die hab’n mich vertwund’t!

Dein rosiger Mund macht Herzen gesund. Macht Jugend verständig, macht Tote lebendig, macht Kranke gesund.

Wer hat denn das schöne Liedlein erdacht? Es haben’s drei Gäns’ über’s Wasser gebracht! Zwei graue und eine weiße! Und wer das Liedlein nicht singen kann, dem wollen sie es pfeifen!

Who made up this little song?

High in the mountain stands a house, From it a sweet pretty maid looks out, But that is not her home, She’s the innkeeper’s young daughter. She lives on the green moor.

My heart is sick, Come, my love, and cure it. Your dark brown eyes Have wounded me. Your rosy lips Can cure sick hearts, Make young men wise, Make dead men live, Can cure the sick.

Who made up this pretty little song? Three geese brought it across the water. Two grey ones and a white one; And for those who can’t sing this song, They will pipe it to them. They will!

Instrumentation

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, triangle, strings

Verlorne Müh’!

Sie: Büble, wir wollen ausse gehe! Wollen wir? Unsere Lämmer besehe? Gelt! Komm’, lieb’s Büberle, komm’, ich bitt’!

Er: Närrisches Dinterle, ich geh dir halt nit!

Sie: Willst vielleicht a Bissel nasche? Hol’ dir was aus meiner Tasch’! Hol’, lieb’s Büberle, hol’, ich bitt’!

Er: Närrisches Dinterle, ich nasch’ dir holt nit!

Sie: Gelt, ich soll mein Herz dir schenke? Immer willst an mich gedenke!? Nimm’s! Lieb’s Büberle! Nimm’s, ich bitt’!

Er: Närrisches Dinterle, ich mag es holt nit!

Wasted Effort

She: Hey laddie, shall we go walking, Shall we see to our lambs? Come, dear laddie, Come, I beg you.

He: Foolish girl, I’ll not go with you.

She: Perhaps you’d like a little nibble, Take a morsel from my pack; Take it, dear lad, Take something, I beg you.

He: Foolish girl, I’ll take no nibbles from you.

She: I’ll offer you my heart, then, So you’ll always think of me; Take it, dear laddie! Take it, I beg you.

He: Foolish girl, I’ll have none of it!

Instrumentation 2 flutes (both doubling on piccolos), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, triangle, strings

MAHLER’S WUNDERHORN WITH HANS GRAF AND SUMI

Rheinlegendchen

Bald gras’ich am Neckar, bald gras’ ich am Rhein, bald hab’ ich ein Schätzel, bald bin ich allein!

Was hilft mir das Grasen, wenn d’ Sichel nicht schneid’t, was hilft mir ein Schätzel, wenn’s bei mir nicht bleibt!

So soll ich denn grasen am Neckar, am Rhein; So werf’ ich mein goldenes Ringlein hinein.

Es fließet im Neckar und fließet im Rhein, soll schwimmen hinunter ins Meer tief hinein.

Und schwimmt es, das Ringlein, so frißt es ein Fisch!

Das Fischlein soll kommen auf’s König sein Tisch.

Der König tät fragen, wenn’s Ringlein sollt’ sein? Da tät mein Schatz sagen: “Das Ringlein g’hört mein!”

Mein Schätzlein tät springen bergauf und bergein, Tät mir wied’rum bringen das Goldringlein fein.

Kannst grasen am Neckar, kannst grasen am Rhein, Wirf du mir nur immer dein Ringlein hinein!

Little Rhine Legend

I mow by the Neckar, I mow by the Rhine; At times I’ve a sweetheart, At times I’m alone.

What use is mowing, If the sickle won’t cut, What use is a sweetheart, If she’ll not stay.

So if I’m to mow By the Neckar, and Rhine, I’ll throw in their waters My little gold ring.

It’ll flow in the Neckar And flow in the Rhine, And float right away To the depths of the sea.

And floating, the ring Will be gulped by a fish, The fish will be served At the King’s own table.

The King will enquire Whose ring it might be; My sweetheart will say The ring belongs to me.

My sweetheart will bound Over hill, over dale, And bring back to me My little gold ring.

You can mow by the Neckar And mow by the Rhine, If you’ll always keep throwing Your ring in for me.

Instrumentation flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, strings

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben; Sie hat so lange nichts von mir vernommen, Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben!

Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen, Ob sie mich fuer gestorben haelt, Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen, Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.

Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetuemmel! Und ruh’ in einem stillen Gebiet! Ich leb’ allein in meinem Himmel, In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied!

I am lost to the world

I am lost to the world

With which I used to waste much time; It has for so long known nothing of me, It may well believe that I am dead.

Nor am I at all concerned If it should think that I am dead. Nor can I deny it, For truly I am dead to the world.

I am dead to the world’s tumult And rest in a quiet realm! I live alone in my heaven, In my love, in my song!

Instrumentation

oboe, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, harp, strings

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897)

Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 (1883)

I II III IV

Allegro con brio Andante

Poco allegretto Allegro

Brahms wrote his Third Symphony in the summer of 1883 while vacationing in the German spa town of Wiesbaden. The then 50-year-old composer celebrated an important year of his life as he labelled it as an “important milestone on the road to death”. It was a time of taking stock, and introspection which in turn became the summit of Brahms’s orchestral output. On 2 December 1883, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra premiered the masterpiece under the direction of Hans Richter, who also acclaimed it as Brahms’s Eroica. It is the shortest of Brahms’s four symphonies but always considered the best of the set.

Allegro con brio The piece begins heroically with three powerful chords which highlight a personal stamp, a musical motto of three notes that he used in his music: F-A-F, Frei aber froh, or “free but happy”. The swinging momentum provides a steady powerful undercurrent. A questioning dissonance occurs when Brahms flattens the third, which leads one to question the ambiguous nature of freedom in Brahms’s philosophy. The music turns sentimental when we hear a reminiscent of a much earlier work of Brahms, Begräbnisgesang, a “song of burial”. Many have argued that the element of loss might have been a tribute

to Robert Schumann, Brahms’s mentor, a close friend and father figure. Hints of Schumannian influences can also be heard in the swinging momentum and first theme of the movement, evoking Schumann’s Third, Rhenish Symphony. The motto of F-A-F returns but this time, Brahms build a bigger and possibly anguish climax, seemingly conclusive, but instead descends into a quiet and introspective end.

Andante Clarinets and bassoon open the next movement with a folk-song like theme, alongside added colours and texture of the horns and flute. Brahms then builds on the impression of cohesion by unifying his melodic ideas with ingenious interlinks and cross-references that run throughout the work. The melancholic and mysterious second theme played by the clarinet and bassoon, strongly contrasted to the homely first theme, returns later in the finale in a stormy and violent facade.

Poco allegretto Like Schumann, Brahms was not just a fine symphonist, but a great composer of songs. The first theme in the third movement, introduced by the cello, then later taken up by the horn, is a great reminder of what a great composer of lieder Brahms was. In a way, this movement is hardly a scherzo; it is almost mournful.

Allegro The finale begins with a whispering and serpentine theme on the strings. We then hear a flashback of the second theme from the second movement but in a sinister and sombre quality this time through the use of contrabassoon. The music then quickens with drama and force as if rekindling some of the dramatic fire of the first movement.

Brahms’s signature F-A-F motto reappears in the final bars, this time winding downward towards the final serene F major chord on rustling strings.

Programme note by Lin Tonglin

Instrumentation

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings

World Premiere

2 Dec 1883, Vienna

First performed by SSO 29 Aug 1980

Bradamante at Merlin's Tomb (c.1820) by Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard

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