Masters Program Notes: Mahler & Schubert - Nov 14, 2009

Mahler & Schubert
Classic Landmarks Masters
Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre

Saturday, November 14, 2009 - 8 pm
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
Laura Whalen, soprano

Program

Mahler & Schubert
Classic Landmarks Masters
Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre

Saturday, November 14, 2009 - 8 pm
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
Laura Whalen, soprano

Program

Schubert: Symphony No. 6 (27')*

Intermission

Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (60')*
 Laura Whalen, soprano

*Indicates approximate performance duration

Program Notes

Symphony No. 6 in C Major, D.589
Franz Schubert
(b. Vienna, 1797 / d. Vienna, 1828)

First performance: 1818 by Otto Hatwig and a small orchestra in the conductor's Schottenhof apartment. The public premiere took place December 14, 1828 in Vienna.
This is the ESO premiere of the work

By the age of 21, Franz Schubert had already written five symphonies – this from a composer becoming known more for his short-form works, particularly lieder, than for large-scale orchestral compositions. It was 1818, and Vienna was under the sway of the infectious Italian operas of Gioacchino Rossini, and captivated by the titan from Bonn, Beethoven. Influences of both of these composers could not help but creep into Schubert’s Sixth Symphony, written by a man still young enough to be seeking out his own distinctive compositional voice.

There is much of both the established composers, Rossini and Beethoven, in the symphony’s first movement. It begins with Beethovenian chords and colouring in the slow introduction, though the playfulness of the Allegro which follows, particularly the woodwind scoring, has the air of a Rossini overture. But Schubert’s emerging style is here, too – there is a fascinating tonal range explored in the development section, all based on the material established in the Allegro exposition. The Rossini charm returns in the recapitulation, as does the more muscular feel of Beethoven in the final notes leading to the coda.

There is a lightness and grace in the second movement, dominated by a graceful melody for strings and woodwinds, but punctuated by slightly more brusque contrasting material, adding some dynamic contrast. Beethoven’s strong influence appears once again in the third movement – a Scherzo very much in the Beethoven mould, recalling in fact the older composer’s First Symphony. The final movement finds perhaps the happiest compromise between the work’s influences and Schubert’s own emerging voice. The orchestration is deft, the quiet nature of much of the music does not detract from the movement’s overall buoyancy. The loud-soft dynamic contrasts are used with playful dramatic flair, and listen for the quick twitter of flutes that so dominates the first movement reappear ever so briefly in the closing moments of the finale.


Symphony No. 4 in G Major
Gustav Mahler
(b. Kaliste, Bohemia, 1860 / d. Vienna, 1911)

First performance: November 25, 1901 in Munich
Last ESO performance: May 2003

“The writer of the present review frankly admits that…to him it was one hour or more of the most painful musical torture to which he has been compelled to submit.”
Musical Courier review of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, New York, November 9, 1904

The beginnings of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony lie in its ending – in which a soprano sings a deliberately naïve and childlike impression of heaven. The words are from Das Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”), a very influential collection of German folk poetry assembled and published in the early 19th century. Mahler had intended to include one of the poems from that collection, Das himmlische Leben (“The Heavenly Life”) in his orchestral song cycle made up of selected poems from Das Knaben Wunderhorn. But he changed his mind, and instead considered it as the finale of his Third Symphony. But he changed his mind on that as well, as his Third Symphony took shape, and instead decided to recast the poem, and write a whole symphony that would lead up to the poem as its finale.

Mahler’s previous two symphonies were broad, large canvases, so at first, the smaller scale and more classically-modeled lines of his Fourth Symphony were viewed askance by the public and critics. But again, it was the ending – that view of an unattainable paradise such as only a child could conceive – that set up the symphony’s three preceding movements. With the fourth already written, Mahler wrote the rest of the symphony as the stage upon which to set the child’s song. The smaller scale (by Mahlerian standards) were necessary; the grand designs of his earlier symphonies would be out of place in this work.

The work opens as if inviting us into a fairy realm – a child’s world. Twittering flutes and, of all things, sleigh bells, seem to create a magical landscape. The movement’s main melody is warm and directly lyrical. Yet all is not sunshine. Time and again, the sleigh bells return, as if trying to restore the innocent sunshine of the opening. But they are consistently overwhelmed by a kaleidoscope of counter melodies, some rough, some fanfare-like, some jaunty, until a tremendous, jolting climax about two-thirds of the way through. At the recapitulation, the main melody is presented in a rich orchestral setting, but the mood of uncertainty, of the futility of attaining that innocent realm, wins the day, leading to a raucous, thumping conclusion.

The second movement, a Scherzo with two contrasting trios, is shot through with a deliberate sense of irony. There are dance rhythms throughout the movement, though the lilts are often askew, and prone to twittering commentary from various instruments. The main theme is played by a solo violin, tuned a whole tone higher, so that, as Mahler wrote. “It will have a harsh and shrill sound, as though Death were playing it.” But Death in this wry setting is hardly worrisome.

The long third movement is exquisitely beautiful and exquisitely sad. But in a brief fortissimo about two-thirds of the way through the movement, horns and trumpets sound the song to which the entire symphony has been leading, the song sung by the soprano in the fourth movement. Ending with a surprising and unexpected timpani-accompanied, full-throated flourish, then ebbing away to nothingness, we are led with only the briefest of pauses into the child’s vision of heaven, a heaven that could never be. It is, Mahler wrote, a paradise “coming from another sphere, and hence terrifying for humans: only a child can understand and explain it, and a child does explain it in the end: a child who, if only at the chrysalis stage, already belongs to this superior world.”

Program Notes © 2009 D.T. Baker

Program notes © 2009 by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and its respective annotators. All Rights Reserved. Program notes may not be printed in their entirety without the written consent of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra; excerpts may be quoted if due acknowledgment is given to the author and to the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. For reprint permission, contact D.T. Baker, Music Resource, by email, dave.baker@winspearcentre.com.
 
These notes appear in galley files prepared for Signature magazine, official publication of the ESO, and may contain typographical or other errors, or may differ from the final print version. Programs and artists subject to change without notice.