Ravinia 2023 Issue 3

PAVILION 8:00 PM WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 2023 CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MARIN ALSOP, conductor SASHA COOKE, mezzo-soprano # G. MAHLER Blumine (originally written for Symphony No. 1) A. MAHLER Four songs * (orch. D. & C. Matthews) Die stille Stadt Bei dir ist es traut Laue Sommernacht In meines Vaters Garten Sasha Cooke –Intermission– G. MAHLER Symphony No. 5 Part I Trauermarsch: In gemessenem Schritt. Wie ein Kondukt. Stürmisch bewegt. Mit grösster Vehemenz. ( a long pause follows ) Part II Scherzo: Kräftig, nicht zu schnell. Part III Adagietto: Sehr langsam. [ attacca ] Rondo-Finale: Allegro giocoso. Frisch. # Ravinia Steans Music Institute alum ** First performance by the CSO and at Ravinia Ravinia expresses its appreciation for the generous support of Featured Sponsor The Negaunee Foundation as well as The Mahler Consortium . The Mahler Consortium comprises Judy & Merrill Blau; Howard & Roberta Goss; Helen S. Rubinstein, in memory of Michael J. Rubinstein; Judy & David Schiffman; and Bobette Takiff & the Takiff Family Foundation. GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911) Blumine (originally written for Symphony No. 1 in D major) Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, trumpet, timpani, harp, and strings A new symphonic universe was born in the Symphony No. 1 by Gustav Mahler, one in which life and music remained virtually in- separable. This sound world invariably re- flected the composer’s personal conflict, reli- gious and philosophical outlook, and the current state of his psyche. As Mahler wrote in 1897, “It is only when I truly live that I com- pose, and only when I compose that I truly live.” His debut orchestral work suffered a dis- mal failure at its world premiere in Budapest’s Vigadó Concert Hall on November 20, 1889: this “child of sorrow” remained one of Mahler’s least popular works until long after his death. Many in Budapest recognized im- mediately the subtle and imaginative orches- tration of their opera director. Yet even a rela- tively sympathetic critic like August Beer would write, “He frankly staggers us by his virtuosity in handling the modern orchestra … yet he is easily led astray by just this tech- nical superiority into using harsh colors and exaggerations of expression.” Mahler’s conception for the Symphony No. 1 changed several times. For the Budapest pre- miere, the five-movement work was entitled Symphonic Poem in Two Parts —Part I: 1. In- troduction and Allegro comodo , 2. Andante , and 3. Scherzo , and Part II: 4. À la pompes funèbres and 5. Molto appassionato . Listen- ers, though, expected printed explanations of “symphonic poems” such as those provided by Berlioz, Liszt, and Smetana for their pro- grammatic works—Mahler offered none to his Budapest audiences. For a subsequent performance at Hamburg’s Konzerthaus on October 27, 1893, Mahler provided a descriptive outline and changed Postcard of the Vigadó Concert Hall in Budapest (1905),where Gustav Mahler conducted the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 the work’s name to Titan, a Tone Poem in Symphonic Form . The title Titan came from a novel by Jean Paul, whom Mahler admired for his “extravagances, his love of nature, his exaltation, and his sudden shifts from sub- lime to the grotesque.” Labels were added to all sections of the tone poem—Part I. From the Days of Youth: 1. Spring without End (In- troduction and Allegro comodo), 2. Blumine (Andante), and 3. In Full Sail (Scherzo), and Part II. Commedia humana—4. Aground (Funeral March “in the manner of Calot”) and 5. Dall’ Inferno (Allegro furioso). The symphony appeared in more or less the same form for its third performance seven months later, June 3, 1894, at the Grand Ducal Court Theater in Weimar. Mahler made a complete about-face in his opinion of program music before the fourth performance of the symphony at Berlin’s Phil- harmonie on March 16, 1896: “Just as I find it banal to invent music for a program, I find it unsatisfactory and unfruitful to attempt to provide a program to a piece of music—this in spite of the fact that the immediate cause of a musical conception is certainly an expe- rience of the author, that is to say, a fact which is surely concrete enough to be described in words.” The composer stripped away the pro- grammatic titles and excised Blumine . In later years, Mahler explained to conductor Bruno Walter that he removed this movement be- cause it was “insufficiently symphonic.” A more traditional four-movement symphonic structure resulted, although thematic ref- erences to Blumine in the later movements remained. The Viennese firm of Josef Wein- berger published the Symphony No. 1 in this form in February 1899. The original Blumine score was destroyed during the Allied bombing of the Königli- ches Theater in Kassel during World War II. By a stroke of good fortune, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library retained a copy of the complete symphonic score from the 1893 Hamburg performance. In 1966, Mahler scholar Donald Mitchell Gustav Mahler (1896) RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 17 – JULY 30, 2023 24