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MARIN ALSOP,
conductor
e rst-ever “music curator” at Ravinia, Marin
Alsop is overseeing the festival’s multi-year
celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centennial,
including six concerts with the Chicago Sym-
phony Orchestra this summer. She began her
professional education at
e Juilliard School,
where she earned both a bachelor’s and a mas-
ter’s degree, and Yale University, which awarded
her an honorary doctorate in
; her career
was launched in
when she became the rst
woman to be awarded the Koussevitzky Con-
ducting Prize from Tanglewood, where she be-
came Bernstein’s rst female and nal protégé.
She is also the only conductor to have been
awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, is an honor-
ary member of the Royal Academy of Music and
Royal Philharmonic Society, and was recently
appointed the director of graduate conduct-
ing at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins
University. In addition to her role at Ravinia,
Alsop is central to Bernstein celebrations with
the London Symphony Orchestra, with which
she has a close and long-standing relationship,
and the Southbank Centre, where she is an art-
ist-in-residence. She has been music director of
the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since
and is tenured until
, having had success not
only with the ensemble but also with her Orch-
Kids youth music initiative and the BSO Acad-
emy and Rusty Musicians adult program. She
has also been principal conductor and music
director of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra
since
, leading the ensemble on three ex-
tensive European tours to date, and will become
chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Sym-
phony Orchestra in
. In addition to regular
engagements with the CSO and Cleveland and
Philadelphia Orchestras, Alsop frequently con-
ducts such European ensembles as the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, and London
and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. Her exten-
sive discography has earned multiple
Gramo-
phone
Awards and includes acclaimed Brahms,
Dvořák, and Proko ev cycles on Naxos and
further recordings on Decca, Harmonia Mundi,
and Sony Classical. Marin Alsop made her Ra-
vinia and CSO debuts in
and tonight con-
cludes her h season appearance at the festival.
J’NAI BRIDGES,
mezzo-soprano
A native of Washington, mezzo-soprano J’Nai
Bridges earned a bachelor’s degree from the
Manhattan School of Music, where she appeared
in the US premiere of Iannis Xenakis’s
Oresteia
,
and completed a master’s degree at the Curtis
Institute of Music. While there, she appeared
with the Opera Company of Philadelphia as the
Madrigalist in Puccini’s
Manon Lescaut
. Among
her honors are the Marian Anderson Award
(
), rst prizes at the Gerda Lissner ( )
and Francisco Viñas (
) Competitions, and
a Richard Tucker Career Grant (
). Bridges
completed a three-year residency at the Ryan
Opera Center of the Lyric Opera of Chicago in
, the same year she represented the United
States at the BBC Cardi Singer of the World
Competition. Highlights of her apprenticeship
at the Lyric include appearances as Inez in Ver-
di’s
Il trovatore
, Vlasta in MieczysławWeinberg’s
e Passenger
, and Flora in Verdi’s
La traviata
.
She recently returned to the company to create
the role of Carmen in Jimmy López’s
Bel Canto
.
Last fall, Bridges also created the role of Jose-
fa Segovia in John Adams’s
Girls of the Golden
West
with San Francisco Opera; she made her
debut with the company the previous season
as Bersi in Giordano’s
Andrea Chénier
, which
was also the vehicle of her Bavarian State Op-
era debut that year. She made her role and house
debuts as Preziosilla in Verdi’s
La forza del des-
tino
at the Zurich Opera House earlier this year,
also appearing as a soloist with the Los Ange-
les Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and
BBC Symphony Orchestra. Last season, Bridges
made her Los Angeles Opera debut as Nefertiti
in Philip Glass’s
Akhnaten
and will return to the
company this fall as Kasturbai in the composer’s
Satyagraha
, and she also took her rst bow with
Vancouver Opera as Sister Helen Prejean in Jake
Heggie’s
Dead Man Walking
. J’Nai Bridges made
her Ravinia debut as a soloist in the July ,
,
world premiere of a chamber orchestra version
of Bernstein’s
Songfest
, and tonight she makes
her rst return to the festival.
by the hero Werner while crossing the Rhine
in search of his beloved Margareta. Mahler en-
visioned his
Blumine
adaptation as a “love epi-
sode” within the symphonic drama. is music
also may have been partly autobiographical, a
memorial to his romance with Johanna Richter,
the opera singer who inspired his
Songs of the
Wayfarer
, written around the same time as
Der
Trompeter
. In later years, Mahler explained to
conductor Bruno Walter that he removed
Blu-
mine
because it was “insu ciently symphonic.”
For his
Krä ig bewegt
(strongly moving) scher-
zo, Mahler writes a Ländler, a triple-meter Aus-
trian peasant dance. A slower
trio
moves more
delicately, then the Ländler returns. A er the
double bar, Mahler calls for “a rather long pause”
before the third movement. Gloomy canon-
ic variations on the folk song “Brüder Martin”
(better known as “Frère Jacques”), transposed
to a minor key, provide a refrain for the third
movement. Mahler wrote to Max Marshalk in
, “ is is simply the cry of a deeply wound-
ed heart, preceded by the ghostly, brooding op-
pressiveness of the funeral march.” e rst epi-
sode conjures images of a slow, Hasidic wedding
dance. Another tune comes from the fourth of
the
Songs of the Wayfarer
, where the voice sings
“Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum” (“By the
Road Stands a Linden Tree”).
Mahler’s expanded programmatic title, “From
out of the Inferno into Paradise,” outlines the
progression of temperaments in the
Stürmisch
Bewegt
(“stormy”) nale. Agitated, disjunct
fragments of familiar themes provoke a sense
of rampant chaos. Order returns in the divine
beauty of the violins’ second theme. Additional
material from the rst movement returns, and
an enormous, triumphal coda ennobles the
symphony’s introductory “nature music.”
–Program notes ©
Todd E. Sullivan
Opening page of Mahler’s autograph manuscript
for his Symphony No. 1
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