|
Mahler's Fourth Symphony Side-by-Side Virginia Symphony Orchestra Conductor Eric Jacobson conducted an orchestra that included instrumentalists from the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Old Dominion University Symphony Orchestra and the Governor's School for the Arts Symphony Orchestra. In a one-hour performance we heard Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) Symphony No. 4 without pause. The symphony's fourth movement includes a musical setting of a poem Das Himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life) from Das Knaben Wunderhorn (The Young Boy's Magic Horn). The three earlier movements were designed around this long and joyful folk song, sung in the fourth. The light mood of this fourth symphony is in contrast to Mahler's three earlier symphonies. It is more refined and subtle in expression and techniques and lacking barnstorming climaxes and extremes of emotion. Mahler expressed beauty through nature with sleigh bells and bird calls through his flirtatious melody. He uses all the instrumental voices in chamber-like statements woven together with full orchestral sections, always creating something new and enticing, like a delicate dance on a perfect spring day. The two themes in the first movement are pure lyricism, like Schubert with spontaneity. The first theme is heard on violins. The second, preceded by a horn call, is given to cellos. The orchestration begins simply and moves into more complexity. Sometimes it sounds impressionistic when over the piccolo and bases the flute plays a serene melody. Then the melody develops in a dissonant fashion with high notes in clarinets that are answered by muted trumpets and cymbals. The second movement opens with a horn call followed by an eerie tune in the violin like a village fiddler heard at a distance. The middle trio is in a merry mood. In the third movement we get a broad, stately theme in low strings. In the fourth movement there were moments of urgency by the full orchestra that were soon replaced by the overall joy expressed in the song text found in the program booklet. It is a playful take on heavenly pleasures. Without tumult there is dancing even though the little lambs "go to the butcher Herod." Wine, good vegetables, apples, pears and grapes are there with deer and rabbits and on fasting days the fish swim up to us with joy. Saint Peter catches them and Saint Martha is the cook. Whimsical! Cecilia and her relatives are court musicians and angelic voices bring joy. The bows at the end included the three conductors: Amanda Gates, GSA; Paul Sanho Kim, ODU; Eric Jacobs, VSO; as well as singer Kathryn Kelly of voluptuous voice and sweet, sunny disposition. In this most important community outreach program titled a "Side-by-Side" concert, the students of GSA and ODU had the thrilling experience of one-on-one contact with professional players on their chosen instrument. The Ludwig Diehn Fund at ODU made possible the use of the acoustically excellent Sandler venue. The program booklet's cover was four vividly colorful portraits of Gustav Mahler in the style of Andy Warhol's famous lithograph of Marilyn Monroe. Who could ask for more?
The first music was This Moment by British born, American composer Anna Clyne (b. 1980) and was an effective opener. It had a mysterious beginning sound, anthem-like with substantial power but the heaviness of the mood was ultimately depressing in this brief piece. With eighty-five singers on risers behind the full orchestra, conductor Eric Jacobson fulfilled his long-time dream to conduct John Adams' Harmonium. Backed by the superb Virginia Symphony Chorus, which included many community singers, the orchestra met the challenge of this modern masterpiece in a brilliant, enthralling performance. John Adams (b. 1947) was concerned with tonal harmony when he wrote Harmonium (1980-1981) for choir and symphony orchestra. It is written in three parts with each anchored by a poem: I. Negative Love by John Donne (1572-1631); II. Because I could not stop for death; and III. Wild Nights, both by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). In the negative text Donne was saying something ultimately positive about different kinds of human love. John Adams, in his autobiography, Hallelujah Junction, says "I saw in the poem the suggestion of a soaring arrow, a vector pointing upward, its ascent impelled by ever increasing rhythmic and sonic energy." The opening repeated "No" is sung as a single syllable before it expands into chords, polyrhythmic juxtapositions of two against three and three against four, which suddenly expands to declaim the text. The free space created is filled with dramatic blocks of harmony and webs of instrumental accompaniment. In the middle movement, Dickinson's pensive I could not stop for death is portrayed musically by long, suspended harmonies in the strings, creating a mood of poetic discourse, slow and solemn. "The pulse is barely ticking at all" says Adams. The energy from the Donne poem fades into "...a kind of bardo state, a transitional passage from the end of one lifetime to the dawning of a new one." III. Wild Nights offers a new motion and energy. The orchestra, heaving and surging from its very depths, carries the sensuality of the text in a frantic stampede of a monster orchestral gamelan and the choral shouts of Dickinson's "futile - the Winds - To a Heart in port . . . Rowing in Eden - Ah, the sea! Might I but moor - Tonight - In Thee" all sung as a mass accellerando driven by the conductor faster and faster, almost to the brink of chaos. Now all performers "come together for two gigantic, spasmodic swells only to leave the chorus hanging pianissimo over empty space." Steve Brockman says: Harmonium made me feel the way I often do in meditation or when I walk by myself in the woods on a sunny day: my mind is quiet and I'm aware of a sense of inner spaciousness that's filled with energy." After a twenty-minute intermission and now with the orchestra alone on stage, Maestro Jacobson outlined the plot of Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869). The plot is the composer's opium-fueled fever-dream, a love story with unusual twists and turns. The orchestra told the story using instrumental sound effects that allowed individual players and sections to display their talent in five movements that liberated instrumental colors. I counted thirty-three bell strikes in the final, fifth movement alone. For my preference, the Berlioz would have come before intermission with the brilliant capstone of modern music by Adams closing, but the logistics of eighty-five singers and an expanded roster of instruments waiting around would have been too much to ask. I wish Jacobson had spent as much time introducing Harmonium as he did Symphonie Fantastique. I do appreciate his enthusiasm for the piece; I just wish he'd shown Adams' complex and sometimes baffling work the same detailed explanation. |