Ravinia 2024 Issue 2

PAVILION 7:30 PM SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2024 CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MARIN ALSOP, conductor MAHLER Symphony No. 9 Andante comodo Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb Rondo-Burleske: Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig Adagio: Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend There will be no intermission in this program. Tonight’s concert is performed in nemory of Keene H. Addington II . GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911) Symphony No. 9 Scored for four flutes and piccolo, four oboes and English horn, four B-flat/A clarinets, one E-flat clarinet, and one bass clarinet, four bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani (two players), bass drum, snare drum, triangle, cymbals, tam-tam, glockenspiel, three low bells, harps, and strings Mahler received a shocking medical diagnosis on July 14, 1907, two days after the heartbreak- ing death of his daughter, Maria Anna. Doctors identified an irreparable cardiac defect—a vir- tual sentence of death—and prescribed a drastic reduction in his workaholic routine. The phy- sician’s recommendation included scaling back his professional activities and limiting physical exertion, such as the outdoor walks he enjoyed so much. Superstitious, and perhaps more than a little paranoid, the ailing composer attempted to outmaneuver fate by evading a “Ninth” sym- phony, the number after which Ludwig van Bee- thoven, Franz Schubert, and Anton Bruckner had died. Mahler delayed destiny by giving the successor to his Symphony No. 8 (“Symphony of a Thousand”; 1907) a programmatic title— Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). The term “symphony” was relegated to its subtitle. But, to what extent did Mahler become fearfully obsessed with physical death after his diagnosis? The composer’s own statements shed light on the question. A letter to conductor Bruno Walter written on July 18, 1908, explained away his mel- ancholic state: “But fundamentally, I am only speaking in riddles, for you do not know what has been and still is going on within me; but it is certainly not that hypochondriac fear of death, as you suppose. I have already realized that I should have to die.” Obsessed? Unquestionably, as com- positions produced after the dual tragedies of 1907 demonstrated. Fearful? Not at all. Instead, Mahler dreaded a creative death caused by the very measures intended to prolong life. His doctors’ prescribed reduction in physical Gustav Mahler (1911) activity, in particular, cut too close to the core of his existence. “My mental activity must be com- plimented by physical activity,” he wrote to Wal- ter. Aware of the consequences, Mahler chose a new summer home high in the northern Dolo- mites at Alt-Schluderbach, near the town of To- blach, in 1908, thus liberating his soul but con- demning his body. In a small mountainside shack constructed as his compositional work- shop, Mahler plunged into work on the Ninth Symphony between June and July 1909. Walter perceived a close connection between this symphony and Das Lied von der Erde : “The title of the last canto of Das Lied von der Erde , ‘Der Abschied’—the farewell—might have been used as a heading for the Ninth.” Mahler tacitly sup- ported Walter’s interpretation with subtle refer- ences to other musical “farewells.” His large-scale structure places a slow movement at the end, similar to Tchaikovsky’s final symphony (No. 6, “Pathétique”), whose hidden program followed a progression from life to death. More obvious are the thematic links between the first and final movements of Mahler’s symphony and Beetho- ven’s Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat major, op. 81a, otherwise known as Das Lebewohl (“The Fare- well”). While the motif is indisputable, it remains unclear whose farewell Mahler portrayed: his own impending demise, his daughter’s death, or the unavoidable end to every human life. Anoth- er thematic quotation—Johann Strauss Jr.’s waltz Freut euch des Lebens (Enjoy Life)—might have served as Mahler’s creed during his final years. The Andante comodo reveals that its compos- er had reached a musical, as well as personal, crossroad. Mahler’s writing balances the expres- sive Romantic idiom—luxurious melodic lines, imaginative scoring, and rich harmonies—with modernist chromaticism and a rhapsodic inter- play of three quite dissimilar themes. This mag- nificent movement has been acclaimed as one of the composer’s most glorious and transcendent orchestral essays. Alban Berg described it as “the expression of an exceptional fondness for this earth, the longing to live in peace on it, to enjoy nature to its depths—before death comes.” For the scherzo movement, Mahler chose a commonplace Ländler, a triple-meter peasant Alma and Gustav Mahler strolling near Toblach (1909) RAVINIAMAGAZINE • JULY 1 – JULY 21, 2024 88