Symphony2 MAHLER Symphony No

NEw YoRkPhILhaRmONIc LORIN MAAZEL The CompLeTe MAHLER symphonies Livesymphony2 MAHLER SymPhony NO. 2 in c minor, New York PhilharmoNic Resurrection (1888–94) 84:28 aNd loriN maazel: The comPleTe mahler 1 allegro maestoso 22:42 SYmPhoNieS, live 2 andante moderato 10:13 is released in celebration 3 In quietly flowing motion 10:51 of mr. maazel’s seven-year 4 Primal Light: Very solemn, but simple 4:38 tenure as music Director 5 In the speed of the scherzo — allegro 36:04 of the New york Philharmonic, energico — Slow, mysterious 2002–2009. REcoRdEd LivE June 19–21, 2003, avery Fisher hall Visit nyphil.org/maazelmahler for bonus at Lincoln center for the Performing arts content including a score with mahler’s own notes, video interviews with Lorin maazel, and audio samples from the complete series. Lorin maazeL conductor JESSICa JONES Soprano cover photo: Chris Lee CORNELIA KaLLISCh mezzo-soprano unless otherwise noted, additional imagery: NEW YORK CHORAL ARTISTs, Joseph FLummerFelt Director neW yorK phiLharmoniC arChives vinCe Ford Executive Producer marK Travis Producer Larry rock Recording and mastering Engineer Used by arraNgEment wIth UniversaL Edition a.g., Vienna NotEs on thE ProgRam: MAHLER SymPhony NO. 2 3 Gustav Mahler was already a famous conductor when he embarked on his Second Symphony. Following formal training in Vienna, he obtained his first professional appointment in 1880 as conductor of a summer opera theater in the Upper Austrian town of Bad Hall. From that modest beginning he built a Born steadily growing reputation thanks to July 7, 1860, in Kalisch (Kalis˘te˘), bohemia, a quick succession of directorships with near the town of humpolec musical organizations in Ljubljana, Olomouc, Kassel, Prague, Leipzig, and diEd Budapest, where he unveiled his First may 18, 1911, in Vienna, austria Symphony — disastrously — in late 1889. woRk coMposEd By that time Mahler had already begun 1888 through 1894, although mahler to create what would become his Second continued to revise the symphony’s Symphony. In January 1888 he composed orchestration until 1909 the first movement, which he later named Todtenfeier (Funeral Rites) and cast (and even woRLd premiere performed) as a stand-alone tone poem. That mahler conducted the berlin Philharmonic same year Mahler had also drawn up sketch- in the first three movements on march 4, 1895. es of the symphony second movement. the complete symphony was premiered on December 13, 1895, with mahler again leading On July 8, 1893, Mahler completed the voice- the berlin Philharmonic. and-piano version of the song “Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt” (“St. Anthony of NEw YoRk PhilharmoNic premiere Padua’s Sermon to the Fishes”), which he December 8, 1908, with soprano Laura L. combs, alto gertrude Stein bailey, and would immediately transform into strictly the Oratorio Society of New york, with mahler conducting the New york Symphony instrumental format as the symphony’s (which merged with the New york Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s Philharmonic). third-movement scherzo. By the end of June this was the work’s U.S. premiere. he also completed the second movement and the fourth movement (“Urlicht,” or “Primal Light,” also an orchestrated version of a song). At that point Mahler was still perplexed about the order in which the movements would fall, NotEs on thE ProgRam 4 and he had not figured out how to end the As Mahler wrote three years later to the critic was working on at the time. — Then the piece — the overall structure of the Second Arthur Seidl (not to be confused with Anton choir, up in the organ-loft, intoned Symphony continued to elude him. Seidl, the New York Philharmonic’s music Klopstock’s Resurrection chorale. — It director at that time): flashed on me like lightning, and every- Mahler usually reserved his summers for thing became plain and clear in my mind! composing and gave over the concert seasons I had long contemplated bringing in the It was the flash that all creative artists wait themselves to his conducting duties. Such choir in the last movement, and only the for — “conceiving by the Holy Ghost”! was the case here, and he put aside further fear that it would be taken as a formal What I then experienced had now to be work on his Second until April 1894. By then, imitation of Beethoven made me hesitate expressed in sound. And yet — if I had not specific impetus toward the “solution” of again and again. Then Bülow died, and I already borne the work within me — how his symphony had arrived on March 29, when went to the memorial service. — The could I have had that experience? he attended the memorial service for the mood in which I sat and pondered on the great conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow. departed was utterly in the spirit of what I In the CoMposer’s woRds mahler was occasionally pressed to explain the inner experience of redemption, and so on. just what his overwhelming Second Symphony In a letter to his wife, alma, however, was about. Listeners sensed that it must be mahler dismissed the idea that the program informed by some programmatic scenario, he had deigned to provide could shed any but mahler usually resisted calls to explain real insight — and he did so using a metaphor his music in specific literary terms. that speaks volumes about how he viewed In fact, he did not himself bestow the univer- his recent creation: sally employed subtitle of Resurrection on this work. Nonetheless, he did provide somewhat It gives only a superficial indication, all that formal programs on three occasions: to his any program can do for a musical work, let confidante Natalie bauer-Lechner in January alone this one, which is so much all of a piece 1896; to the critic max marschalk in march that it can no more be explained than the 1896; and for King albert of Saxony, who world itself. — I’m quite sure that if god were requested one when the Second Symphony asked to draw up a program of the world was offered in Dresden in 1901. though he created he could never do it. — at best they differ in details, they follow the general it would be a “revelation” that would say as idea of the struggles of a titanic (or at least little about the nature of god and life as my mahLer Conducting “well-loved”) hero, his succumbing to fate and analysis says about my c-minor Symphony. to death, the striving of the soul toward god, NotEs on thE ProgRam 5 Mahler signed off on the complete “fair copy” The Centrality of the SecoNd in Hamburg on December 18, 1894. The first within its span of an hour and a half mahler’s three movements were played the following Second Symphony conveys pretty much March and the entire symphony in December everything that is essential to understanding (in both cases in Berlin). Critical reception his brave conception of the symphony as a was nightmarish on both occasions, and, genre. here we have the immense scale mahler despite a more interested reaction from was intent on harnessing, represented not many in the audience, the work did not begin only by the work’s length but also through its making much impact in the concert world gigantic performing forces (including the vocal until decades later. It was, however, the first component of two soloists and a chorus), Mahler symphony to appear on recordings, which he directed should be deployed beyond thanks to Deutsche Grammophon’s release, the confines of the stage itself. circa 1923, of Oskar Fried and the Berlin In the first movement mahler wrestles Staatsoper Orchestra valiantly struggling to with funereal thoughts — a true understanding fit its immense demands into the confines of mahler requires considerable submersion of a period recording studio. in fatalism. In the second we glimpse mahler’s enduring penchant for nature-painting, while — JAMEs M. kELLER PROgRam aNNOTATOR the third offers a fine example of his charac- teristic proclivity toward the sardonic and a 1908 BulleTin, published by the New york Symphony, highlighting mahler’s December programs with the orchestra InstRumentAtion four flutes (all doubling macabre. In the fourth we are presented with piccolo), four oboes (two doubling English what is at heart a Lied, an art song, though horn), four clarinets (one doubling bass expanded to an orchestral format — a particular finale begins with two stanzas by the 18th- clarinet and another doubling E-flat clarinet) mahler specialty — and its text is drawn from century author Friedrich gottlieb Klopstock, plus another E-flat clarinet, four bassoons a poetic collection to which the composer but these lead to a more expansive textual (two doubling contrabassoon), ten horns, ten returned repeatedly during his career, the outpouring penned by mahler himself. trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani classic german folk-verse anthology Des Programmatic considerations hover at (two players), cymbals, triangle, military Knaben wunderhorn. In the fifth, the chorus the fringe of this symphony, although mahler, drum, orchestra bells, chimes, bass drums, and soloists combine in a tremendous hymn true to his usual inclinations, preferred tam-tams, two harps, organ, and strings, plus on the theme of resurrection — not the to leave them relatively inexplicit — stuff to soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists and a Resurrection, in the sense most frequently inspire the composer rather than to inform mixed chorus. An off-stage band comprises encountered in christian contexts, so much the listener. Others of mahler’s symphonies four of the ten trumpets, bass drum with as the rebirth of the individual into immortal may delve more obsessively into specific cymbals attached, and additional triangle.

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