NEw YoRkPhILhaRmONIc LORIN MAAZEL The CompLeTe MAHLER symphonies Livesymphony3 MAHLER SymPhony NO. 3 in D minor New York PhilharmoNic (1895–96, rev. through 1906) 103:46 aNd loriN maazel: The comPleTe mahler PaRt ONe SYmPhoNieS, live 1 Forcefully. Decisively. 36:51 is released in celebration PaRt twO of mr. maazel’s seven-year 2 tempo di minuetto. moderately. 10:34 tenure as music Director 3 comodo. Scherzando. Unhurriedly. 17:14 of the New york Philharmonic, 4 Very slow. misterioso. Pianississimo throughout. 9:02 2002–2009. 5 Joyous in tempo and jaunty in expression. 4:21 Visit nyphil.org/maazelmahler for bonus 6 Slow. calm. Deeply felt. 25:44 content including a score with mahler’s own notes, video interviews with REcoRdEd LivE June 16–19, 2004, avery Fisher hall Lorin maazel, and audio samples from at Lincoln center for the Performing arts the complete series. Lorin maazeL conductor cover photo: Chris Lee anna Larsson contralto unless otherwise noted, additional imagery: Women of The WesTminsTer symphoniC Choir, Joseph Flummerfelt Director neW york phiLharmoniC arChives The ameriCan BoyChoir, vinCenT meTallo Director vinCe ford executive Producer Larry roCk Producer, Recording and mastering engineer USeD by arraNgemeNt wIth UniversaL Edition a.g., VIenna NotEs on the ProgRam: MAHLER SymPhony NO. 3 3 “I find it quite strange that people talking about nature only make mention of flowers, birds, and fresh air. But nobody seems to know Pan, the god Dionysos. Nature is able to show all those phenomena, both pleasant and horrible, and I wanted to put these things in a kind of evolutionary development in my work.” So wrote Gustav Mahler to a music critic Born who was trying to understand his Third July 7, 1860, in Kalischt (Kalis˘te˘), bohemia, Symphony, a towering monument to nature, near the town of humpolec but not so entirely reassuring a work as its subject might lead one to expect. onetheless, diEd this longest of Mahler’s symphonies is may 18, 1911, in Vienna, austria one of his most approachable, most relaxed, and least haunted by nightmares and woRk coMposEd apocalyptic visions. the summers of 1895 and 1896, at Steinbach am attersee, in Upper austria, drawing on mate- Because responsibilities on the podium rial from earlier songs; revised through 1906 completely occupied him during concert seasons, Mahler largely relegated his woRLd premiere composing to the summer months, which the complete symphony, June 9, 1902, in he invariably spent as a near hermit at Krefeld, germany, with contralto Luise geller- one bucolic site or another in the Austrian wolter, mahler conducting the orchestra and countryside. When he came to write his choruses of the Festival of the allgemeiner Third Symphony, during the summers of deutscher musikverein; individual movements 1895 and 1896, he was escaping the concert- had already been performed in 1896 and 1897 season rigors connected to his directorship of the orchestra and opera in Hamburg. NEw YoRk PhilharmoNic premiere He had assumed that post in 1891, following February 28, 1922, willem mengelberg conducting the New york Philharmonic at carnegie hall, a peripatetic career that had already led Julia clausson, contralto, with the St. cecilia club and the boys’ choir of Father Finn’s Paulist him through increasingly prestigious music choristers; this was the work’s New york city premiere directorships at Bad Hall (his first profes- sional appointment, which he obtained in 1880), Ljubljana, Olomouc, Kassel, Prague, Leipzig, and Budapest. NotEs on the ProgRam 4 Mahler’s preferred summer retreat, for the As Mahler worked on the symphony he The movements were separated into two moment, was the village of Steinbach on the revised his program and titles considerably. uneven parts: the first movement (itself Attersee, in the breathtakingly beautiful Just after completing the work Mahler lasting just over a half hour, which is to say, Salzkammergut of Upper Austria, some 40 enumerated the movements’ revised titles in a third of the symphony’s total running miles southwest of Linz. Initially this sym- a letter to Max Marschalk on August 6, 1896: time) alone comprising the first part, the phony was to be called The Happy Life, a remaining five movements the second. Summer Night’s Dream (not after Shakespeare Part One: … reviewer’s notes), and each of its six move- “Pan Awakes. Summer Marches In. That’s how things stood until the piece was ments was to carry an individual title: “What (Pan’s Procession)” finally premiered in 1902, when suddenly the Forest Tells Me,” “What the Twilight Part Two: Mahler decided to dispense with the pro- Tells Me,” “What Love Tells Me,” “What the “What the Flowers of the Meadow Tell Me” grammatic titles along with most of the Flowers of the Meadow Tell Me,” “What the “What the Animals of the Forest Tell Me” rather detailed programmatic markings he Cuckoo Tells Me,” and “What the Child “What Man Tells Me” had previously placed within the course Tells Me.” “What the Angels Tell Me” of the movements. How to explain all this “What Love Tells Me” Program Music vs. ABsoLute Music In the late 19th century the musical world more connected to the “absolutists”; on the bring your ears and a heart along and — not was swept up in a heated aesthetic contro- other hand, program music was proving very least — willingly surrender to the rhapsodist.” versy about the relative merits of program popular in the concert hall — of course, every In his first two symphonies mahler basically music and absolute music — blatantly de- composer wants his music to be loved. In retrofitted descriptive programs to music he scriptive music versus music written more 1902, in a letter to the critic max Kalbeck, had already composed — essentially purveying abstractly, strictly on its own terms. the mahler tried to clarify (or at least justify) his absolute music as program music — but absolute music camp included then-recent his position. “beginning with beethoven,” he then he balked and deleted the programs symphonists such as brahms and bruckner, wrote, “there is no modern music without its entirely. In the case of his third Symphony, a while the program faction was making great underlying program. — but no music is worth program was part and parcel of the work all strides through the symphonic poems being anything if first you have to tell the listener along; however, in the course of composition, turned out by the young Richard Strauss. what experience lies behind it and what he is as the symphony “found its shape,” mahler mahler was torn, and seemingly tried to supposed to experience in it. and so, yet again, amended his program considerably. In the straddle the divide. at heart he doubtless felt to hell with every program! you just have to end, he decided to withhold the program from his listeners. NotEs on the ProgRam 5 shilly-shallying? Mahler tried to, in a letter souRcEs and InspiratioNs to the conductor Josef Krug-Waldsee: mahler wrote his third Symphony during visited the composer at Steinbach in July two summers in the bucolic Upper austrian 1896, mahler, seeing the young conductor Those titles were an attempt on my part village of Steinbach on the attersee. many survey the jaw-dropping scenery, said to him, to provide non-musicians with something of the movers and shakers of the music “you need not stand staring at that; I have to hold onto and with signposts for the industry were passing their summers at already composed it all.” intellectual, or better, the expressive content bad Ischl, a dozen miles to the south. Not of the various movements and for their mahler — his was the quest for solitude. relationship to each other and to the whole. apart from a couple of trips to visit brahms That it didn’t work (as, in fact, it never in bad Ischl, he spent much of his time in could work) and that it led only to misinter- Steinbach alone, in a cabin at the end of a pretations of the most horrendous sort field, near the shore of the lake itself. became painfully clear all too quickly. … the furnishings inside his composition Those titles … will surely say something to studio were spartan, sufficient to meet his you after you know the score. You will draw needs, but not inviting distraction: a desk intimations from them about how I imag- and a couple of chairs, a stove, a baby-grand ined the steady intensification of feeling, piano. mahler dependably entered his ollection c from the indistinct, unyielding, elemental “composing house” at seven in the morning existences (of the forces of nature) to the and stayed there at least until mid-afternoon, tender formation of the human heart, sometimes into the evening if his creative which in turn points toward and reaches juices were really flowing. that this symphony Samuel Schweizer a region beyond itself (God). is to a great extent a reflection of the land- The GasThof zum höllenGeBirGe, where mahler scape in which it was created cannot be spent his summers in the years 1893 to 1986, including This last comment goes to the heart of the doubted. when the conductor bruno walter those when he composed his Symphony No. 3. Third Symphony perhaps more than any other, but one has trouble overcoming the lingering suspicion that the earlier titles in fact have a great deal to do with what this piece is about. — JAMEs M. kELLER PROgRam aNNOTATOR NotEs on the ProgRam 6 InstRumentAtioN four flutes (all doubling The NEw YoRk PhilharmoNic piccolo), four oboes (one doubling English connectioN horn), four clarinets (one doubling E-flat gustav mahler’s connection with the New clarinet and one doubling bass clarinet) plus york Philharmonic began on November 29, another E-flat clarinet, four bassoons (one 1908, when he first led the New york doubling contrabassoon), eight horns, Symphony (which would merge with the New four trumpets, post horn (offstage), four york Philharmonic in 1928 to form today’s trombones, tuba, timpani, orchestra bells, Philharmonic).