CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY www.cums.org.uk Principal Guest Conductor Sir Roger Norrington CBE CUMS Conductor Laureate Stephen Cleobury CBE Principal Guest Conductor Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra Peter Stark Directors Cambridge University Chamber Choir Martin Ennis and David Lowe Saturday 21 January 2017, 8.00pm King’s College Chapel, Cambridge Mahler Symphony No.3 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA MEMBERS OF CUMS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CHOIRS OF CLARE, GONVILLE & CAIUS, JESUS AND SELWYN COLLEGES MEMBERS OF CUMS SYMPHONY CHORUS AND CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY CHAMBER CHOIR CHORISTERS OF JESUS COLLEGE AND ST CATHARINE’S COLLEGE GIRLS’ CHOIR Paul Daniel conductor Claudia Huckle contralto Graham Ross chorus master CUMS is grateful for the support of TTP Group – Principal Sponsor, Bloom Design, Christ’s College, Churchill College, Corpus Christi College, CUMS Fund, CUMS Supporters’ Circle, Emmanuel College, Jesus College, King’s College, Murray Edwards College, Newnham College, Peterhouse College, St John’s College, Trinity College, University of Cambridge Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge Societies Syndicate, West Road Concert Hall, Wolfson College PROGRAMME NOTES Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) Symphony No. 3 in D minor My [Third] Symphony will be something the like of which the world has never heard. Gustav Mahler stands alongside Beethoven, Bruckner 4) What night tells me (mankind); 5) What the morn- and Brahms as one of the greatest symphonists; ing bells tell me (the angels); 6) What love tells me. yet, his ten symphonies (the fnal left unfnished at The work had its première in the small German town his death) are works of intrinsic self-doubt, which of Krefeld in 1902, conducted by the composer. It reveal a man plagued by creative tension and inner was a huge success, despite the ad hoc orchestra contradictions throughout his life. He was just 36 which had been thrown together at the last minute. years old when he completed his Third Symphony The same could not be said of the Vienna première in 1896. Although it uses smaller forces than the in 1904: it divided opinion, provoking outrage vast Second and Eighth Symphonies, it is among his on the one hand and impassioned praise on the most ambitious works – bringing together elements other. In the years between its completion and frst of philosophy, literature, religion and music. performance, Mahler had married Alma Schindler, become Music Director of the Vienna Opera in 1897, Europe was in a state of musical fux at the end of and completed fve symphonies. He had turned the nineteenth century, on the precipice of mod- away from programmatic music and removed all ernism but still holding on to conservatism. Mahler explanatory titles and descriptions associated with was an ardent Wagnerian, opposed to those who the Third. The programme for the première offered believed in ‘absolute music’, such as Brahms. He was no text except for tempo indications and song titles also an assimilated Jew during a period of rising for the fourth and ffth movements. Ominously for anti-Semitism in fn de siècle Vienna; he eventually programme note writers, Mahler wrote to the critic converted to Christianity in 1897, but a sense of Max Kalbeck in 1902: ‘no music is worth anything isolation remained throughout his life. 1896 was also if you frst have to tell the listener what experience the year which saw him begin a passionate affair lies behind it’. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt with the singer Anna von Mildenburg. Amidst all this that Mahler’s original descriptions lie at the heart of uncertainty, Mahler was soon drawn to the writings the Third Symphony. of Arthur Schopenhauer and, in particular, Friedrich Nietzsche. The vast frst movement was written after the rest of the Symphony and, at over 30 minutes, is longer Mahler had immersed himself in Nietzsche and in than the next four movements put together. The the Third Symphony set some of the most famous music is vividly suggestive but carries with it a cer- lines from the German philosopher’s Also sprach tain vulnerability; the turbulent, disordered forces of Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra). This was the life – Dionysus – are played out against the harmony, work in which Nietzsche put forward the ideal of the order and reason of Apollo in a recurring confict. Übermensch: the ‘Superman’ who, rather than plac- ing faith in an afterlife, embraces the fullness of life The second movement was the frst music that Mahler and nature. While composing the Third Symphony, wrote for the Third Symphony and was originally pre- Mahler wrote: ‘it always strikes me as odd that most sented as a freestanding work called Blumenstück people, when they speak of ‘nature’, think only of (Flower Piece). It is an intimate, sentimental minuet fowers, little birds, and woodsy smells. No one which Mahler called ‘the most carefree thing that I knows the god Dionysus, the great ‘Pan’’. Initially, have ever written – as carefree as only fowers are’. Mahler was even going to title the work after either Its simple evocation of ‘the fowers’ almost make it ‘Pan’, the Greek God of nature, or ‘The Gay Science’, sound like a tone poem but as Mahler wrote in 1895: one of Nietzsche’s earlier philosophical works. ‘my calling it a symphony is really inaccurate, for it doesn’t keep to the traditional form in any way. But Because of his conducting duties, Mahler rarely to me ‘symphony’ means constructing a world with had time to compose during the year and so did all the technical means at one’s disposal’. most of his composing in the beloved little Austrian village where he spent his summers. It was here that The third movement is based on a song from Mahler’s the Third Symphony was written in the summers of song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn; however, as 1895 and 1896. We are fortunate to have a record of with the Scherzo from his Second Symphony, Mahler Mahler’s letters to Anna von Mildenburg, in which he here creates a purely instrumental movement. It wrote at length about his latest work: ‘just imagine tells of the change from the spring, represented a work of such magnitude that it actually mirrors the by the cuckoo, to the summer, represented by the whole world’, he wrote – ‘the whole of nature fnds a nightingale. Or, in Mahler’s own words: ‘this piece voice … some passages in it seem so uncanny that I really sounds as if all nature were making faces and can hardly recognise them as my own work’. sticking out its tongue. But there is such a horrible, panic-like humour in it that one is overcome with Mahler initially described the Symphony’s six move- horror rather than laughter’. Amidst the humour ments under vivid programmatic titles: 1) Summer of the ‘animals of the forest’, Mahler writes one marches in; 2) What the fowers of the meadow of his most beautiful orchestral solos: the famous tell me; 3) What the animals of the forest tell me; post-horn interlude, with the orchestral accompani- ‘I could almost call this [fnale] ‘What God tells me’. ment marked to be played ‘as if overhearring’. And truly, in the sense that God can only be under- stood as love’. And so my work begins as a musical Much of the fourth movement is delivered in an awe- poem embracing all stages of development in a struck pianissimo, as the distant sound of the human step-wise ascent. It begins with inanimate nature voice emerges from the void. The text is a setting of and ascends to the love of God’. Mahler believed his the ‘Midnight Song’ from Nietzsche’s Also sprach decision to end the Third Symphony with an Adagio Zarathustra, featuring the alto soloist. Nietzsche’s was one of the most special he made; beginning message here is that the universe is in constant fux with a heartbreakingly lyrical string melody, the forc- and that no moment of joy can be singled out; thus, es of the orchestra join one by one on the path to if one can accept ‘the eternal recurrence of the same an inexorable climax. There is a noble reverence to event’ then that moment can be joy, and pain can this fnal movement, carrying echoes of Beethoven, pass away: ‘all joy seeks … deep, deep eternity’. Bruckner and Wagner’s Parsifal. Alternating between The sound of bells – both literally and impersonated passages of calm assurance and intense passion, by trebles – heralds the angels’ song of the ffth the music fnds its apotheosis in a life-affrming movement of the Symphony. The text is taken from D major coda. As all words cease, only music remains, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which Mahler turned to completing what Mahler called ‘my most personal throughout his career for inspiration. When writ- and richest work’. ing to Anna von Mildenburg on this movement’s theme, he cited a biblical motto which he would later Declan Kennedy inscribe on his score: ‘Father, see these wounds of mine! Let no creature of yours be lost!’ TEXT AND TRANSLATION Friedrich Nietzsche – Also Sprach Zarathustra O Mensch! Gib Acht! O Man Take heed! Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht? What says the deep midnight? Ich schlief! Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht! I slept, I slept, from a deep dream have I awoken: Die Welt ist tief! the world is deep, Und tiefer, als der Tag gedacht! and deeper than the day has thought. Tief ist ihr Weh! Deep is its pain, Lust, tiefer noch als Herzeleid. Joy, deeper still than heartache Weh spricht: Vergeh! Pain says: Pass away! Doch all’ Lust will Ewigkeit! But all joy seeks eternity, Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit! seeks deep, deep eternity! Von Des Knaben Wunderhorn Es sungen drei Engel einen süßen Gesang, Three angels sang a sweet song, Mit Freuden es selig in dem Himmel klang.