THOMAS HAMPSON SINGS MAHLER 7 JUNE 2018 Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall 8 JUNE 2018 Costa Hall, Geelong CONCERT PROGRAM Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Andrea Molino conductor Thomas Hampson baritone Mahler Totenfeier Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen INTERVAL Messiaen Le Tombeau Resplendissant R. Strauss Tod und Verklärung Pre-Concert conversation Join us for a pre-concert conversation with Matthew Lorenzen inside Hamer Hall (Thursday) and Costa Hall (Friday) from 6.15pm. Running time: 2 hours, including a 20-minute interval In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for silencing and dimming the light on your phone. The MSO acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are performing. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present, and the Elders from mso.com.au other communities who may be in attendance. (03) 9929 9600 2 MELBOURNE SYMPHONY ANDREA MOLINO ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR Established in 1906, the Melbourne Andrea Molino recently conducted Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an Shostakovich’s The Nose and arts leader and Australia’s longest- Szymanowski’s King Roger for Opera running professional orchestra. Chief Australia. At home in 20th century Conductor Sir Andrew Davis has and 21st century repertoire, he has been at the helm of MSO since 2013. also conducted Verdi’s Rigoletto, Il Engaging more than 4 million people Trovatore, and La Traviata as well as each year, the MSO reaches diverse works by Rossini, Mozart, Haydn and audiences through live performances, Richard Strauss. He opened La Fenice’s recordings, TV and radio broadcasts 2010 concert season in Venice with the and live streaming. world premiere of Maderna’s Requiem (which he has also recorded). He has The MSO works with Associate conducted world premiere productions Conductor Benjamin Northey and such as Mosca’s Signor Goldoni. Cybec Assistant Conductor Tianyi Lu, as well as with such eminent recent Andrea has conducted the Brussels guest conductors as Tan Dun, John Philharmonic, Dresden Symphony Adams, Jakub Hrůša and Jukka-Pekka (with the project aghet, dedicated to Saraste. It also collaborates with non- the 100th anniversary of the Armenian classical musicians such as Elton John, genocide), and the BBC Scottish Nick Cave and Flight Facilities. Symphony Orchestras. As a composer, his main interest is innovative, multimedia-oriented music theatre. 3 THOMAS HAMPSON BARITONE Thomas Hampson’s honours include France’s Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, induction into Gramophone’s Hall of Fame and a Living Legend Award from the Library of Congress. Having appeared in the world’s major houses, Thomas Hampson has a repertoire of over 80 roles. His discography comprises more than 170 albums. Recently he has appeared at the Vienna State Opera reprising a signature-role, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and given concerts in Stuttgart, Cologne, Budapest, Baden- Baden, Paris and Lisbon. Thomas also gave the Russian premiere in Moscow of Michael Daugherty’s song-cycle Letters from Lincoln, written specially for him, and conducted music from Bernstein’s On the Town. Through the Hampsong Foundation (founded 2003), he employs the art of song to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding. 4 PROGRAM NOTES life, our hearts are gripped by a voice of awe-inspiring solemnity, which we seldom or never hear above the GUSTAV MAHLER deafening traffic of mundane affairs. (1860-1911) It opens with the same dramatic Totenfeier gesture. One theme, which strides through the stormy texture, often ‘If this is music, then I know nothing as a trumpet call, returns in the finale of music,’ said Hans von Bülow, to depict the resurrection of the the legendary conductor, when, in dead. The second subject, as in the 1891, Mahler played through a long more familiar version, is a limpid and symphonic poem entitled Todtenfeier lyrical theme. The movement is long (funeral rites) to him at the piano. and structurally complex, with the Todtenfeier, to give it its original (and allusion to the Dies irae plainchant deliberately archaic) spelling, was warning of the Last Judgement still conceived as a sequel to the First in evidence during the development. Symphony, on which Mahler was still Occasionally Totenfeier shows seams working when he conceived of the that are more skilfully disguised in new piece. Like Beethoven’s Eroica the final version. Mahler calls for a and numerous works by Richard standard late-Romantic orchestra Strauss, the First Symphony was for Totenfeier – large, but still much intended as the musical portrait of smaller than that required for the a hero. Composed in 1888, Totenfeier Symphony: here, along with the was to be the hero’s funeral rites; it is regular string band, he restricts himself almost inevitable that the movement to triple, not quadruple winds, and a should be in C minor, like the Funeral regular complement of brass, including March in Beethoven’s Symphony. only four horns, three trumpets and Totenfeier sought, as Mahler later trombones, tuba, a single harp, put it, to ask: ‘Why did you live, why no organ and a modest percussion suffer? Is it all nothing but a huge, section of only one timpanist and two terrible joke?’ The original version of percussionists. Totenfeier is an only very slightly shorter The enormous tonal palette to which version of what would become the we are now accustomed is thus a little first movement of the Symphony No.2, restricted, but Mahler nevertheless the ‘Resurrection’, so Mahler’s note manages a considerable variety of for an early performance of the whole colours, and, indeed, his orchestration symphony is germane to this version: here, as everywhere, is as notable We are standing beside the coffin of for its kaleidoscope of delicate effects a man beloved. For the last time his as for its monumental ones, such as life, his battles, his sufferings and the crashing chords that seem to his purpose pass before the mind’s threaten total collapse later in the eye. And now, at this deeply stirring movement. One may miss moments moment, when we are released from of sheer volume – for instance, the the paltry distractions of everyday later enhancement provided by the 5 tam-tam when the opening gesture Mahler (the music and chorus director at is reprised halfway through the piece the time) appears twice in the Director’s – and there is a moment before the Register of Fines. The first time was for final recapitulation of the opening ‘…the most annoying habit of walking where the energy trails off in a way very noisily on the heels of his boots that Mahler has overcome in the later during rehearsals and performances’. version. Nonetheless, Totenfeier’s The second offence involved causing range of mood asks those searching female members of the company to questions, and reflects Mahler’s break out in ‘peals of laughter’ during remark that ‘You are battered to the conversation with them. earth with clubs and lifted to the It is tempting to suppose that one heights on angels’ wings’. of those giggling female singers Mahler was for a time stuck with was Johanna Richter, a blue-eyed Totenfeier, and even when he resolved coloratura soprano with whom Mahler to make it the first movement of a was completely besotted. It is unclear symphony. It was only with von Bülow’s when or at whose instigation their death and burial in 1894 that the idea relationship soured. Some of his letters of a choral finale celebrating the imply he had tried to break things off; Resurrection would come to him. but when the young composer turned to his music, the tone is of a jilted lover. © Gordon Kerry 2018 He wrote to a friend: The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra gave the first Australian performance of Totenfeier, under Karl I have composed a song cycle, Anton Rickenbacher on 10 February 1988. This is the Orchestra’s only performance since then. presently of six songs [later four], dedicated to her. She has not seen them. What could they tell her GUSTAV MAHLER beyond what she already knows? (1860-1911) I will enclose [to you] the last song, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen although the inadequate words Songs of a Wayfarer cannot say even a small part. The songs are a sequence, in which a Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht wayfaring journeyman, who has had (On my sweetheart’s wedding day) a great sorrow, goes out into the Ging heut’ Morgen über’s Feld world and wanders aimlessly… (I went out this morning into the fields) The term ‘journeyman’ (Gesellen in Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer German) is not frequently heard these (I have a red-hot knife) days. Technically, it is someone who Die zwei blauen Augen has completed their apprenticeship but (The two blue eyes) is not self-employed, perhaps requiring further practical experience before The head of the opera house at Kassel being admitted to a professional in the early 1880s was Wilhelm Treiber, organisation. Mahler’s title, which a former army officer who ran the could be literally translated as Songs company on military lines. Gustav of a Travelling Journeyman, therefore 6 already implies a certain pathos: certain instruments in mind. Mahler someone looking for work, for a home; orchestrated the work probably in the someone who has left their master summer of 1896, shortly before its and not found another. Gesell can also official premiere. mean ‘companion’, lending an ironic The opening motif of On my touch to this solitary subject. Sweetheart’s Wedding Day possibly Mahler was reiterating a principal reflects the composer’s Moravian recurring theme of 19th-century heritage in its folk-like character. German Lieder: the world-weary (A similar phrase is heard in the third solo traveller, roaming unloved and movement of the First Symphony.) unmissed.