Tuesday, October 29, 2019 at 7:30 pm Mahler Songs Christian Gerhaher, Baritone Gerold Huber, Piano ALL-MAHLER PROGRAM Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (1883–85) Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz Selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1887–1898) Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht? Ablösung im Sommer Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald Um schlimme Kinder artig zu Machen Rheinlegendchen Der Schildwache Nachtlied Intermission Please make certain all your electronic devices are switched off. This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. Steinway Piano Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater Adrienne Arsht Stage White Light Festival The White Light Festival 2019 is made possible by The Shubert Foundation, The Katzenberger Foundation, Inc., Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas), Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc., Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater, Culture Ireland, The Joelson Foundation, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, J.C.C. Fund, Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of New York, Great Performers Circle, Lincoln Center Patrons and Lincoln Center Members Endowment support is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation Fund for Dance Lead Support for Great Performers provided by PGIM, the global investment management business of Prudential Financial, Inc. Additional Support for Great Performers is provided by Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser, The Shubert Foundation, The Katzenberger Foundation, Inc., Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, Great Performers Circle, Lincoln Center Patrons and Lincoln Center Members Endowment support for Symphonic Masters is provided by the Leon Levy Fund Endowment support is also provided by UBS Public support is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature NewYork-Presbyterian is the Official Hospital of Lincoln Center UPCOMING WHITE LIGHT FESTIVAL EVENTS: Tuesday–Wednesday, October 29–30, at 7:30 pm in the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College Zauberland (Magic Land) (New York premiere) An encounter with Schumann’s Dichterliebe Julia Bullock, soprano; Cédric Tiberghien, piano With Ben Clifford, Natasha Kafka, David Rawlins, and Raphael Zari Directed by Katie Mitchell Post-performance talk with Julia Bullock, Cédric Tiberghien, Bernard Foccroulle, and Ara Guzelimian on Wednesday, October 30 Thursday, November 7 at 7:30 pm at Alice Tully Hall Britten Sinfonia The Sixteen, choir; Harry Christophers, conductor ALL-JAMES MACMILLAN PROGRAM Miserere (U.S. premiere) Stabat Mater (U.S. premiere) Pre-concert talk with James MacMillan and Andrew Shenton at 6:15 pm at the Opera Learning Center (Rose building, 6th floor) For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit WhiteLightFestival.org. Call the Lincoln Center Info Request Line at (212) 875-5766 to learn about program cancellations or to request a White Light Festival brochure. Visit WhiteLightFestival.org for full festival listings. Join the conversation: #WhiteLightFestival We would like to remind you that the sound of coughing and rustling paper might distract the performers and your fellow audience members. In consideration of the performing artists and members of the audience, those who must leave before the end of the performance are asked to do so between pieces. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in the building. White Light Festival I The Program Selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn Lied des Verfolgten im Turm Das irdische Leben Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen Kindertotenlieder (1901–04) Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgehn Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen Wenn dein Mütterlein tritt zur Tür herein Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen In diesem Wetter in diesem Braus This performance is approximately one hour and 35 minutes long, including intermission. Please join us for a White Light Lounge in the Alice Tully Hall lobby following the performance. This concert is also part of Great Performers. White Light Festival I Snapshot By Christopher H. Gibbs Gustav Mahler’s lieder divide neatly into two periods, transitioning during the summer of 1901: early songs inspired by German texts in the folksong anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”) yielded to settings of the artful poems of Friedrich Rückert. At first overtly, then in more subtle ways, many of these lieder are intimately connected to Mahler’s symphonies. This evening’s concert opens with Mahler’s first song cycle, Lieder eines Snapshot fahrenden Gesellen (“Songs of a Wayfarer”), which is set to the com- poser’s own poetry, though inspired by the Wunderhorn collection. Then come ten Wunderhorn songs, with a variety of moods and musical styles, selected from the two dozen Mahler wrote over the course of nearly 15 years. The program ends with another cycle, Kindertotenlieder (“Songs on the Death of Children”), five heartbreaking songs set to Rückert’s words. Both poet and composer experienced the trauma of losing children. While Mahler’s songs are now best known in their orchestral guises, most of them exist both in piano and orchestra versions; which version he composed first varied from case to case. Each song projects a distinctive flavor appropriate to its accompaniment—the piano versions are not pale reductions of orchestral splendors, nor are the orchestral songs overblown expansions of intimate utterances. Tonight’s concert offers a chance to hear some of Mahler’s supreme vocal achievements with piano accompa- niment, the format in which he himself also performed and programmed his songs. —Copyright © 2019 by Christopher H. Gibbs White Light Festival I Notes on the Program By Christopher H. Gibbs Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (1883–85) Selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1887–1898) Kindertotenlieder (1901–04) GUSTAV MAHLER Born July 7, 1860, in Kališteˇ, Bohemia Died May 18, 1911, in Vienna, Austria Gustav Mahler composed almost exclusively in two genres—song and symphony—and from the start connected them in fascinating and inno- vative ways. His songs consist of his early ones, inspired by the folksong anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”), and later settings of the elevated poetry of Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866). For nearly 15 years, starting in his mid-twenties, Mahler was obsessed with the Wunderhorn poems, producing two dozen songs altogether. The texts derive from a three-volume anthology of Alte deutsche Lieder (“Old German Songs”), assembled in the first decade of the 19th century by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, which includes authentic folk poems as well as some that were freely adapted or invented outright. Although they had attracted many composers before Mahler, for him the Notes on the Program poems proved a revelation beginning in the mid-1880s. Tonight’s performance begins with Mahler’s first song cycle, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (“Songs of a Wayfarer”). Although he wrote the texts himself, they are much in the spirit of the Wunderhorn collec- tion and sometimes lift lines directly from them. At the time Mahler was working as a conductor in Kassel and in love with a young singer named Johanna Richter. The four songs tell of the pain of rejected love juxta- posed with the consolation and joy found in nature. Mahler originally composed them with piano accompaniment, orchestrated them several years later, and then went on to use the second and fourth of the cycle instrumentally in his Symphony No. 1 (“Titan”). Mahler’s firstWunderhorn songs date from 1887 and he employed some of them, both sung and purely instrumentally, in his Second, Third, and Fourth symphonies. The ten songs on this evening’s program traverse a variety of moods and situations as well as musical styles, from quite simple and popular ones appropriate to folk texts to much more sophisticated settings. The subjects range from military ones (Mahler grew up near an army barracks) to nature, love, a hungry child, and humorous situations. In 1905, Mahler remarked to Anton von Webern that “after Des Knaben Wunderhorn I could not compose anything but Rückert—this is lyric poetry from the source, all else is lyric poetry of a derivative sort.” His crucial move from folk poetry to Rückert came during the summer of White Light Festival I Notes on the Program 1901. Earlier that year, age 40, he had survived a near-death crisis (internal hem- orrhaging), resigned as principal conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, and was soon to meet the beautiful young Alma Schindler, whom he married in March 1902. Administrative and performance duties forced him to do most of his com- posing during the summer months and in 1901, after some years of minimal activity, he occupied a new house on the Wörthersee, an idyllic mountain resort, and began to write again. He worked on his latest symphony, the Fifth, and wrote three of the five Kindertotenlieder (“Songs on the Death of Children”). Although Rückert was better known in his day as an Orientalist than poet, many composers were drawn to his words, among them Schubert and Schumann. Mahler set ten and presented all but one (an intimate love song for Alma) at an important concert in January 1905 at Vienna’s Musikverein. The centerpiece that evening was his setting of five poems from the collection of several hundred Kindertotenlieder that Rückert wrote following the deaths of two of his children in the 1830s. Adding to the three songs already written in 1901, Mahler composed two more in the summer of 1904, by which time he was a father of two young daughters. In her memoirs Alma recounts her distress concerning these haunted and haunt- ing songs: “I can understand setting such frightful words to music if one had no children, or had lost those one had.