Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis
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MAHLER 9 16, 17 & 19 MARCH 2018 CONCERT PROGRAM MELBOURNE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Aspiring to the sublime: Mahler 9 And in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything.’ ‘Wohin ich geh'? Ich geh', ich wand're in die Berge. Ich suche Ruhe für mein einsam Herz.’ Almost at the end of MSO’s Mahler cycle (Where do I go? I go, I wander in the of Symphonies, the Ninth aspires to the mountains. I seek peace for my lonely heart.) sublime, and to what lies beyond. Mahler’s Ninth Symphony continues where Ronald Vermeulen Der Abschied, the last movement from his Director of Artistic Planning Lied von der Erde, ends. A similar feeling of farewell and resignation permeates most of this Symphony. Is it a coincidence that the first movement opens with a motif that For further listening we recommend: alludes to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.26 On 7–8 June, conductor Andrea Molino Les Adieux? Beethoven wrote the word will lead the MSO in a Mahler rarity: the ‘Le-be-wohl’ (Farewell) above the three tone poem Totenfeier. This work became Melbourne Symphony Orchestra descending chords that Mahler quotes the basis for the first movement of in his Symphony. Mahler’s Second Symphony. But even after Sir Andrew Davis conductor The two middle movements are an the Symphony’s premiere, Mahler kept emotional rollercoaster, with an angelic performing Totenfeier as a separate piece. trumpet melody in the Rondo Burlesque In the same concert, Mahler-baritone par pointing at the sublime serenity of the excellence, Thomas Hampson will perform Mahler Symphony No.9 Adagio that concludes the Symphony. the Songs of a Wayfarer. The last page of the Ninth is the most There are many good recordings of the visionary in all of Mahler’s oeuvre. Here, the Ninth Symphony. I wouldn’t want to be music becomes silence and this silence is without the insights of Bruno Walter, deafening. As Leonard Bernstein, the great who conducted the world premiere – Mahlerian, whose anniversary we celebrate and his recording comes with an this year, wrote: ‘...the strands of sound interview and rehearsal fragments (Sony), disintegrate. We hold on to them, hovering Leonard Bernstein’s performance from between hope and submission… We cling the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, or to them as they dematerialise; we are Carlo Maria Giulini’s deeply human holding two – then one. One, and suddenly interpretation from Chicago (both Deutsche none. For a petrifying moment there is only Grammophon). For an excellent, more silence. Then again, a strand, a broken recent, version, look at the DVD of the strand, two strands, one... none. We are half Luzern Festival Orchestra conducted by in love with easeful death... now more than Claudio Abbado on Accentus. ever seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain... Running time 1 hour and 30 minutes, there will be no interval during this concert In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for dimming the lighting on your mobile phone. The MSO acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are performing. We pay our respects to their mso.com.au Elders, past and present, and the Elders from other communities who may be in attendance. 3 MELBOURNE SYMPHONY MEET THE CONDUCTOR PROGRAM NOTES ORCHESTRA GUSTAV MAHLER As time went on and the strains of life (1860-1911) showed no signs of abating, Mahler emerged into a curious mixture of despair Symphony No.9 in D and elation. ‘I have lived through so much in the last year and a half, that I can hardly Andante comodo talk about it,’ he wrote to his conducting Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. disciple Bruno Walter in 1909. ‘How should Etwas täppisch und sehr derb (In the tempo I attempt to describe so appalling a crisis! of a leisurely Ländler. Rather clumsy and I see everything in a new light – feel so very coarse). much alive, and the habit of being alive is Rondo-Burleske (Allegro assai) sweeter than ever. I should not be surprised Established in 1906, the Melbourne SIR ANDREW DAVIS Sehr trotzig (Very defiant) at times if suddenly I should notice that I had Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an arts leader a new body (like Faust in the last scene)!’ and Australia’s longest-running professional Adagio Chief Conductor of the Melbourne orchestra. Chief Conductor Sir Andrew The wild mood swings continued and while Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis Davis has been at the helm of MSO since At the end of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, Mahler completed his Seventh and then is also Music Director and Principal 2013. Engaging more than 3 million people completed in 1904, three mighty hammer Eighth Symphonies, he and Alma began to Conductor of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. each year, the MSO reaches a variety of blows thunder down, a symbol of fate so go their separate ways, she into the arms He is Conductor Laureate of both the audiences through live performances, terrifying that Mahler himself removed of other lovers, he into consultations with BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto recordings, TV and radio broadcasts and one of them from the revised score of psychotherapists including, most famously, Symphony, where he has also been named live streaming. 1906. But perhaps it was too late and the an encounter with Sigmund Freud in 1910. interim Artistic Director until 2020. gods had been tempted once too often. Sir Andrew Davis gave his inaugural Although their love endured until the end, In a career spanning more than 40 years In the following year, 1907, Mahler himself concerts as the MSO’s Chief Conductor in their new mutual directions meant that he has conducted virtually all the world’s suffered his own triple disaster. His beloved 2013. The MSO also works with Associate Alma and Mahler began to spend their major orchestras and opera companies four-year-old daughter, Maria, died from Conductor Benjamin Northey and Assistant summers apart. In 1909, Alma deposited Sir Andrew’s many CDs include a Messiah scarlet fever, Mahler himself was sacked Conductor Tianyi Lu, as well as with such Mahler at his composing hut near Toblach nominated for a 2018 Grammy, Bliss’ from the Vienna State Opera where he had eminent recent guest conductors as Tan and continued on herself to Levico, where The Beatitudes, and a recording with the served with distinction for ten years, and Dun, John Adams, Jakub Hrůša and Jukka- she sought treatment for her ongoing Bergen Philharmonic of Vaughan Williams’ he was diagnosed with a terminal heart Pekka Saraste. It has also collaborated with nervous condition. Mahler’s own state of Job/Symphony No.9 nominated for a 2018 condition. Not surprisingly, especially non-classical musicians including Sir Elton mind was euphoric to the point of delusion. BBC Music Magazine Award. With the MSO given the poor state of his general health, John, Nick Cave and Armand van Helden. ‘I feel marvellous here!’ he wrote to her. Mahler collapsed into a psychological he has just released a third recording in the ‘To be able to sit working by the open heap, ‘as a tree is felled’. ongoing Richard Strauss series, featuring window, and breathing the air, the trees the Alpine Symphony and Till Eulenspiegel. The stress on him and his family became and flowers all the time – this is a delight intolerable. As the ailing Mahler sought to I have never known till now. I see now how rebuild his career in New York, commuting perverse my life in summer has always been. back and forth annually across the Atlantic I feel myself getting better every minute.’ so that his longstanding routine of summer composition in Europe could continue, his wife, Alma, suffered a nervous breakdown of her own. 4 5 Less than two years later, Mahler was dead. But by the time 1909 rolled around, Sometimes in this majestic symphony instrumentation is modest, requiring Mahler’s ‘dark night of the soul’, as Deryck Mahler was going ‘gentle into that good little more than a normal large orchestra Despite his bravura, Mahler knew all Cooke has described the mood of his night’ – but sometimes he wasn’t. such as many of his contemporaries might along that the end was near. He could final years, meant that his superstitions have used. feel his weak heart faltering, its erratic Again as if aware of his mortality, Mahler were no longer sufficient to prevent him beat leaving him faint and shaky. He worked on the symphony in great haste, Throughout his career, Mahler effectively from naming this work in D as his Ninth felt uncharacteristically superstitious, writing to Bruno Walter, ‘I wrote the score rewrote the rule book of symphonic Symphony. Apparently seeing the end sometimes with good reason. In the last quite rapidly, in maddening haste…as a composition, and never more so than drawing near, he had little option but summer of Mahler’s life, while he sat result, the score is probably indecipherable here in the Ninth Symphony. Its sequence to acknowledge the likelihood of fate, composing in the hut at Toblach, for for strangers’ eyes.’ He told Walter that he of movements and disposition of keys although he did make a point of not instance, a giant eagle swooped into the hoped he would live until the winter so that are virtually unprecedented. The slow showing the score to Walter – the latter, room, terrifying the composer. Eventually he could prepare a clean copy of the score. movements form the outer pillars, framing who had heard so much about it, would the eagle fled, but no sooner had it done so the grotesque, even nightmarish quicker only see it after the composer’s death.