Philadelphia Orchestra Perform Mahler

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 22 October 2024 17:33

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, on the evening of Tuesday, October 15th, I had the extravagant pleasure to hear the estimable Philadelphia Orchestra—illustriously conducted by Music and Artistic Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin—confidently perform Gustav Mahler’s seldom played, magnificent and monumental Symphony No. 3—this was the first of three symphonies by the composer that will be presented by the ensemble this season at this venue. The orchestra was beautifully complemented by the incomparable mezzo-soprano and Metropolitan Opera star, Joyce DiDonato, as well as sopranos and altos from the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir under the direction of Joe Miller, the Philadelphia Girls Choir directed by Nathan Wadley, and the Philadelphia Boys Choir led by Jeffrey R. Smith.

According to the useful program notes by Christopher H. Gibbs:

After the work was finished, [Mahler] told a colleague he “imagined the constantly increasing articulation of feeling, from the muted, rigid, merely elemental form of existence (the forces of Nature) to the delicate structure of the human heart, which in its turn reaches further still, pointing beyond (to God).”

Mahler wrote the following to archeologist Friedrich Löhr:

My new symphony will take approximately 1½ hours—it is all in grand symphonic form.

The emphasis on my personal experiences (that is, what things tell me) corresponds to the peculiar ideas embodied in the whole work. Movements II–V are meant to express the hierarchy of organisms ...

The First Movement, “Summer Marches In,” is intended to hint at the humorously subjective content. Summer is conceived in the role of victor—amidst all that grows and flowers, creeps and flies, thinks and yearns, and finally all that of which we have only an intuitive inkling (angels—bells—transcendental).

Eternal love spins its web within us, over and above all else—as rays flow together into a focal point. Now do you understand?

It is my most individual and my richest work …

As he was completing the symphony, he stated: “My symphony will be unlike anything the world has ever heard! All of nature speaks in it, telling deep secrets that one might guess only in a dream!” He also remarked, “It begins with lifeless Nature and rises to God’s love!” In this connection he said:

Of course no one gets an inkling that for me Nature includes all that is terrifying, great and also lovely (it is precisely this that I wanted to express in the whole work, a kind of evolutionary development). I always feel it strange when most people speak of “Nature” what they mean is flowers, little birds, the scent of the pinewoods, etc. No one knows the god Dionysus, or great Pan. Well there you have a kind of program—i.e. a sample of how I compose. Always and everywhere it is the very sound of Nature!

About the immense first movement, he told his confidant Natalie Bauer-Lechner:

It’s frightening the way this movement seems to grow of its own accord more than anything else I have done … It is in every sense larger than life … Real horror seizes me when I see where it is leading.

The movement begins regally and then becomes protractedly portentous; a brief, transitional, almost pastoral section ultimately leads to an affirmative, indeed cheerful, episode succeeded by music of a more neo-Wagnerian character and then by much in a more popular vein. Some recapitulation and transmutation of earlier material ensues, building to a dynamic conclusion.

About the later movements, the composer wrote, “They are as infinite in their variety as the world itself, reaching their final culmination, their liberating resolution, in the ‘Love’ movement.” 

The second part of the symphony starts with the “Flower Piece,” which begins as a charming minuet that acquires a hurried, propulsive manner. It precedes a characteristically playful scherzo—based on one of his settings of poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, “Ablösung im Sommer”—that is energetic although with two solemn interludes as well as a short, frenzied passage—about which Mahler declared, “We once again feel the heavy shadow of lifeless nature, of as yet uncrystallized, inorganic matter”—approaching the movement’s emphatic close. Gibbs comments that the composer said that “he had in mind ‘Der Postillon,’ a poem by Nikolaus Lenau.”

The final three movements, performed without pause, are especially glorious. DiDonato stunningly sang the “Midnight Song” from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra in the fourth movement, a magisterial setting that exudes a celestial gravity. The chorus then joined the singer for a setting of “Es sungen drei Engel” (“Three Angels Sang”) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which is joyous and celebratory although darker currents move to the fore at moments.

According to Gibbs, the “dramatic soprano Anna von Mildenburg, with whom Mahler was romantically involved at the time, was understandably interested in this finale.” Mahler wrote to her:

You would like to know “What Love Tells Me?” Dearest Annerl, love tells me very beautiful things! And when love speaks to me now it always talks about you! But the love in my symphony is one different from what you suppose. The [motto] of this movement … is:

Father, behold the wounds I bear!

Let no creature be lost!

Now do you understand what it is about? It is an attempt to show the summit, the highest level from which the world can be surveyed. I could equally well call the movement something like “What God Tells Me!” And so my work is a musical poem that goes through all the stages of evolution, step by step. It begins with inanimate Nature and progresses to God’s love! People will need time to crack the nuts I am shaking down from the tree for them …

He told Bauer-Lechner:

In the Adagio, everything is resolved into quiet ‘being’; the Ixion-wheel of appearances has at last been brought to a standstill. But in the fast movements, the Minuet and Allegro (and even in the Andante, according to my tempos) everything is flow, movement, ‘becoming.’ So, contrary to custom—and without knowing why, at the time—I concluded my Second and Third symphonies with Adagios: that is, with a higher as opposed to a lower form.

This exalting movement is unearthly too and grows in intensity, finally attaining an astonishing climax

The artists were deservedly rewarded with a very enthusiastic, standing ovation.