CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The Cleveland Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 8:00 PM

Pre-concert talk starts at 7:00 PM in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage with Walter Frisch, Professor of Music, Columbia University.

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director and Conductor
Malin Hartelius, Soprano
Bernarda Fink, Mezzo-Soprano
Westminster Symphonic Choir
Joe Miller, Conductor

MAHLER Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection"

Sponsored by Smith Barney

This concert is made possible, in part, by The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.

Program Notes:

The Concert At a Glance

Although this symphony caused Mahler much difficulty in the writing—he finished it more than six years after beginning work on it—it also proved to be one of his first great public successes as a composer. With its joyous ending employing full chorus and two soloists, it also became something of a calling card for Mahler as a conductor-composer. He programmed it among his first and last orchestral concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic, in 1899 and 1907 respectively, and programmed it again among his first orchestral concerts in New York, where he led its US premiere on December 8, 1908, at Carnegie Hall. This symphony’s meaning (what it’s “about”) wrestles directly with big questions of value and worth, striving and accomplishment—things that Mahler—and most of us—wrestle and struggle with throughout our lives. That Mahler came to a triumphant conclusion within this music gives testament to an enduringly optimistic and hopeful strain of outlook within humanity—and a grand potential for every generation that hears its musical arguments, battles, and ultimate victory.

Notes on the Program

GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, “Resurrection”
Born July 7, 1860, in Kalischt (Kalištì), Bohemia; died May 18, 1911, in Vienna.

Composed in 1888–94, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 was premiered on December 13, 1895, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the composer. (The first three movements of the symphony, without the final two, had been first performed the previous March, also in Berlin.) The Symphony received its US premiere at Carnegie Hall on December 8, 1908, with Laura Combs, soprano; Gertrude May Stein-Bailey, contralto; the Oratorio Society of New York; and the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.

Scoring: 4 flutes (all four doubling piccolo), 4 oboes (third and fourth doubling english horn), 3 clarinets (third doubling bass clarinet), 2 E-flat clarinets, 4 bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), 10 horns, 6 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, 2 sets of timpani, percussion (snare drums, bass drum, cymbals, 2 tam-tams, triangle, glockenspiel, 3 bells, rute [a bundle of twigs or a birch-broom]), 2 harps, organ, and strings, plus soprano and alto soloists, and mixed chorus. In the final movement, there is an offstage band of 4 horns, 4 trumpets, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle.

Mahler famously said that “My time will come.” He was right, and his time is now. Over the past 20 years, it has been especially interesting to watch Mahler’s Second Symphony take the place of Beethoven’s Ninth for celebratory occasions. Or, if it hasn’t quite taken the Ninth’s place, Mahler’s Second is today programmed at least as frequently as Beethoven’s great work. And many of Mahler’s other symphonies have also become stalwarts in each season’s repertoire lists.

This season, among London’s professional orchestras, there are two competing Mahler cycles on offer, with most of a third also available from the city’s other groups and visiting orchestras. Within a six month period, one can choose from four different performances of Mahler’s longest symphony, the Third (requiring, in addition to an augmented orchestra, women’s and boys’ chorus, and alto soloist).

New York isn’t as Mahler-centric this season as London. But while he hasn’t been forgotten, Beethoven isn’t the only musical titan. Just as often these days, it’s Mahler.

Gustav Mahler’s music—and his life—are full of contrasts. His very person and every day were filled with juxtapositions of the refined with the coarse, of big and small, of rapid mood swings and peaceful contentment, of joy and wonderment together with sadness and commonplace. He was a mesmerizing conductor sometimes filled with grave self-doubt. He was raised a Jew and then became a Catholic (at age 37), but was strongly attracted to Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation.

During his own lifetime Mahler was best known, and most admired, as a conductor. His music was less favorably reviewed. Although it appealed to some (Richard Strauss was an early advocate), it found many audiences quite unprepared for the startling juxtaposition of sounds that Mahler frequently wrote—massive orchestras in which a passage for only a few instruments might be suddenly swamped by the entire ensemble welling up excitedly, followed by something equally different and perplexing. His music, which to 21st-century ears sounds so normal in its churning, was often a perplexing “curtain of chaos” to 19th-century audiences raised on Beethoven and Brahms, or even Berlioz and Wagner.

As a composer Mahler created his earliest works for chamber groups, or for voice and piano, and then for voice and orchestra. But eventually he began writing—and wrestling with—his First Symphony. It was a rough road and a difficult birth. And Mahler’s fumbling attempts to “explain” the symphony as being “about” a hero (triumphant, but battered, then dying) didn’t help early audiences understand “what” he was trying to say.

Yet, with the First Symphony written (but unperformed), Mahler immediately began writing a Second. And he started exactly where the First had ended. With the strangely dead hero figure still in his mind, he wrote a long funeral march. Then he set the score aside, uncertain of its future.

Mahler’s First Symphony was indeed a learning experience. At its premiere in Budapest in 1889, he realized almost at once that he had failed. This was his first big orchestral writing to be performed, and he simply had gotten much of the balancing between instruments wrong. It may indeed have sounded like a “curtain of chaos” at the premiere. But Mahler, always striving for perfection, set about revising the score (in truth, he tinkered with it for over a decade before fashioning it into what audiences know today, including jettisoning an entire “extra” movement).

In the summer of 1893, he took up the Second Symphony again, writing the second and third movements, and then adding a short orchestra song for solo voice as a fourth movement. But he was at a loss about how to write an ending for this expansive work.

In January 1894, one of his colleague conductors in Hamburg, Hans von Bülow, died. Strangely enough, this gave Mahler the inspiration he needed to complete the Second Symphony. At von Bülow’s funeral, a chorus sang out the words of a resurrection hymn text by Friederich Klopstock—and Mahler could suddenly see how to finish the symphony, with a grand movement for soloists and full chorus singing a hymn about Resurrection and Eternal Life.

More importantly, Mahler also fully understood what he was trying to write about in all of his music. Not that he had the answers immediately at hand, if ever. But he was able to verbalize the fact that his music was about the big questions in life, about the meaning of life itself—in the big picture and for each individual.

“Goethe said immortal things on this subject,” Mahler wrote, referring to humanity’s place in the universe. “What I want to say I am naturally only able to express fully in music . . . That is what has been given to me and for that I will be called to account.”

The second symphony begins with the long funeral march that Mahler had written at the same time as the First Symphony. Perhaps this is for the everyman hero in Mahler’s mind, or perhaps for humanity as a whole. A grand march of strings and winds moves forward, building time and again to anguished cries. These lead to a climactic stuttering chord cluster about ten minutes in, before the march starts all over again. While mourning our fallen hero, we simultaneously seem to recall his triumphs in brightly ecstatic declarations, eventually resolving into more introspective music of remembrance. This is shattered at the very end with a quick reminder that he’s dead. We are left in silence.

Mahler marked very specific instructions in the score at this point, stating that a pause of several minutes should occur before continuing. Such lengthy time for silent introspection may be less necessary—or possible—in our fast-paced modern world, and conductors today, balancing between adequate reflection and noisy restlessness in the audience, choose varying lengths for Mahler’s requested period of silence.

The second movement is in the “tempo of a minuet.” It is mostly gentle, peaceful music. At times it feels menacing, as though a distant storm cloud has appeared on the horizon, but the menace is always in the distance and these moments melt away to quiet tranquility.

The bucolic reverie is broken with the timpani strokes that open the third-movement Scherzo. This is an orchestral working of one of Mahler’s songs, about St. Anthony and the Fishes, which he was writing at the same time. The movement is full of conflicting musical ideas, as if a multitude of St. Anthony’s fishes (bigger, smaller, snapping, peaceful, etc.) are swimming within one vast, steadily moving current. It is tempting (and possibly quite accurate) to read meaning into the music from the unvocalized song text, with the foolishly selfish fishes swimming happily but uncomprehendingly against St. Anthony’s words for a better life.

The short, quiet fourth movement follows immediately. Scored for chamber orchestra, it introduces a solo voice singing about humanity’s desire for meaning (a ray of light) from God. Although Mahler at least twice considered asking for another significant pause at the end of this movement, the published score includes instruction to continue attacca (“at once”) into the finale.

The fifth movement opens with thunderous noise, then dissolves into quiet expectancy. Brass are heard from offstage. Their tune is picked up onstage, dissected and questioned, then brought gradually to a magnificent full-throated salute in the orchestra, reiterated and repeated. It continues into a triumphant march, vanquishing all opposition. Suddenly, the music turns to terror and uncertainty. Offstage again, we hear new ideas in opposition, which boil over and then subside toward stillness.

From pairs of trumpets arranged outside the auditorium comes “the Grand Call” (der grosse AppelI) echoed against birdcalls from flute and piccolo onstage, followed by the chorus’s quiet intoning of the Resurrection Hymn. For some listeners, this is the Christian Day of Judgment. For Mahler, it was less specific and more universal (among the many changes and additions he made to the original hymn text, Mahler removed the words “Jesus Christ” altogether). Nevertheless, the symphony’s ending is a tangible reckoning in music of Mahler’s own life values—partly terrifying, but also expectant, wondering, and then exhilaratingly reassuring as the symphony comes to a fully triumphant ending, whole orchestra and chorus, with soloists soaring and bells peeling.

“We will all return,” Mahler said to Richard Specht, one of his first biographers. “Our life only has sense if it is shot through with this certainty, and it is wholly unimportant whether in later reincarnation we recall an earlier one. What counts is not the individual and his memory . . . but only that great movement towards perfection, that purification that progresses with each reincarnation. That is why I have to live ethically, to spare my Self a part of the same road when it returns.”

And what can be better, for Mahler-the-composer’s belief in reincarnation and eternal life, than to have his “Resurrection” Symphony performed today—again and again—captivating and thrilling audiences all over the world nearly a century after its creator’s death.

—Copyright © 2007 Eric Sellen

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director and Conductor
Franz Welser-Möst is in his sixth season as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra. His long-term commitment to the Orchestra extends through the 2011–12 season.

Highlights of Mr. Welser-Möst’s concerts with The Cleveland Orchestra during his first five seasons have included many works new to the Orchestra’s repertoire that span four centuries, including nine world premieres and as many US premieres. His programming also has featured eagerly anticipated annual concert performances of opera. In Cleveland, Mr. Welser-Möst actively participates in community concerts and educational programs including the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and partnerships with area colleges and universities.

Under Franz Welser-Möst’s direction, the Orchestra has toured extensively, to critical acclaim. In addition to biennial residencies at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of their kind by an American orchestra, the Orchestra continues its residencies at the Lucerne Festival featuring Roche Commissions, a collaboration between the Orchestra, the Festival, and Carnegie Hall. Domestically, the Orchestra and Mr. Welser-Möst have toured from coast to coast. In January 2007, the Orchestra began its ten-year residency project in Miami, Florida, at the new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts.

The first commercially available DVD featuring the Orchestra and Mr. Welser-Möst, of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5, was released worldwide by EuroArts in February 2007. The Orchestra’s first commercial CD with Mr. Welser-Möst, of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, will be released by Deutsche Grammophon during the fall of 2007.

In June 2007, Mr. Welser-Möst was named General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera beginning in 2010. His long partnership with the company features a new production of Wagner’s Ring cycle in the 2007–08 and 2008–09 seasons.

Mr. Welser-Möst became general music director of the Zurich Opera in 2005, having previously served as music director (1995 to 2002) and principal conductor (2002 to 2005). He regularly conducts leading European orchestras and opera companies, including those of Berlin and Vienna, and served as music director of the London Philharmonic from 1990 to 1996.

Among Mr. Welser-Möst’s honors are recognition from the Western Law Center for Disability Rights of his advocacy on behalf of people with disabilities; honorary membership in the Vienna Singverein; the 2003 Conductor of the Year Award from Musical America; honorary doctorates from Case Western Reserve University, Oberlin College, and the Cleveland Institute of Music; the Silver Medal of the Region of Upper Austria; and the appointment as an Academician of the Yutse European Academy Foundation.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Long considered one of America’s great orchestras, The Cleveland Orchestra stands today among the world’s most-revered symphonic ensembles. In concerts at home in Severance Hall; at its summer home, Blossom Music Center; and on tour, The Cleveland Orchestra continues to set standards of performing excellence and imaginative programming that serve as models for audiences and performers alike.

The Cleveland Orchestra was founded in 1918, under the direction of Nikolai Sokoloff, who served until 1933. Succeeding music directors have included Artur Rodzinski (1933–1943), Erich Leinsdorf (1943–1946), George Szell (1946–1970), Lorin Maazel (1972–1982), and Christoph von Dohnányi (1984–2002). Franz Welser-Möst’s appointment as the seventh Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra was announced in June 1999, providing for a seamless transition in the artistic leadership of the Orchestra with the 2002–03 season.

Under Franz Welser-Möst’s direction, the Orchestra has toured extensively, to critical acclaim. Their European Tour following these Carnegie Hall appearances includes their third residency at the Musikverein in Vienna. In addition to these biennial residencies, the first of their kind by an American orchestra, the Orchestra continues its residencies at the Lucerne Festival featuring Roche Commissions, a collaboration between the Orchestra, the Festival, and Carnegie Hall. Domestically, the Orchestra and Mr. Welser-Möst have toured from coast to coast, and in January 2007 the Orchestra began its ten-year residency project in Miami, Florida, at the new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts.

The Cleveland Orchestra has a long and distinguished recording and broadcast history. Recent releases include the Orchestra’s first commercially available DVD recording, of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5, which was released worldwide by EuroArts last February. The next DVD by the Orchestra and Mr. Welser-Möst will be of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9, which will be recorded at the Musikverein this fall. Deutsche Grammophon has just released the Orchestra’s first commercial CD with Mr. Welser-Möst, of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra are broadcast on radio stations throughout North America and Europe.

In 1931, the Orchestra moved to its permanent home, Severance Hall. In 2000, Severance Hall reopened following a $36 million restoration and renovation project, which included the construction of a new concert stage, enhanced technical capabilities, and the refurbishment and re-installation (in 2001) of the building’s original E.M. Skinner organ.

The Cleveland Orchestra is in a new era under Franz Welser-Möst’s guidance, while maintaining a steadfast commitment to its long-held traditions of artistic excellence, educational outreach, and community service.

Malin Hartelius, Soprano
Swedish soprano Malin Hartelius made her Cleveland Orchestra debut in September 2002, and has returned to sing the role of Gretel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel (2004), in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (2006), and for the role of Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier (2007). After starting her career as a member of the Vienna State Opera in 1989, Ms. Hartelius began making regular appearances at the Zurich Opera, where her engagements have included the roles of Pamina in The Magic Flute, Estrella in Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella, Konstanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio, Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. In 1997, she received international acclaim for her performances as Adina in The Elixir of Love at the Frankfurt Opera and as Blondchen in The Abduction from the Seraglio at the Salzburg Festival. In the summer of 2006, she appeared in a series of Mozart operas in Salzburg. She also has appeared in leading roles with the Hamburg State Opera, Munich State Opera, and the Opéra National de Paris, among other companies. Other recent highlights include appearances in Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes at the Opéra Bastille de Paris, and in Der Rosenkavalier at the Vienna State Opera. Ms. Hartelius regularly appears as soloist with major orchestras.

Bernarda Fink, Mezzo-Soprano
Mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink made her Cleveland Orchestra debut in April 2006, as a soloist in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Born in Buenos Aires to Slovenian parents, she commands a repertoire ranging from ancient music to works of the 20th century. She has appeared to critical acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and Argentina and frequently performs with leading orchestras in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and Vienna, as well as the best-known Baroque orchestras. She regularly appears in recital at the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and at the Wigmore Hall in London, among many other prestigious venues. Recently, Ms. Fink sang Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody to critical acclaim in Ravenna, Italy, under the baton of Riccardo Muti. Under Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s direction she performed in the Verdi Requiem with the Vienna Philharmonic and in Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri in Munich. She also recently sang the role of Cecilio in Mozart’s Lucio Silla with great success at the Theater an der Wien. Highlights of her 2006–07 season included a program of Mozart arias at the Salzburg Festival; the Mozart Requiem in Linz, Salzburg, and on tour in Japan; and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at the Musikverein.

Westminster Symphonic Choir
Joe Miller, Conductor
Joe Miller is conductor of two of America’s most renowned choral ensembles—the 32-voice Westminster Choir and the 200-voice Westminster Symphonic Choir. As director of choral activities at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey, he oversees an extensive choral program that includes eight ensembles.

In addition to several collaborations with the Westminster Symphonic Choir and leading conductors and orchestras, Maestro Miller’s 2007–08 season includes conducting a series of concerts with the Westminster Choir at the Spoleto Festival USA and with the Westminster Chamber Choir in Italy, an intensive two-week choral program in Florence, Italy.

Guest conductor for numerous all-state and honors choirs, he will conduct the Florida All-State Honors Choir and the American Choral Directors Western Division High School Honors Choir this season. He will also serve as headliner for the 2008 Ohio Choral Directors Summer Conference.

Before his appointment at Westminster, Joe Miller was director of choral studies, professor of music and voice area chair at Western Michigan University School of Music. With the Western Michigan Chorale he received a number of awards, including the Silver Medal at the 2005 European Grand Prix for Choral Singing in Varna, Bulgaria, and the Grand Prize at the 2002 Robert Schumann International Choral Competition in Zwickau, Germany. He has also served as director of choral and vocal activities at California State University, artistic director/conductor of the Stockton Chorale, and music director of the Mother Lode Music Festival.

WESTMINSTER SYMPHONIC CHOIR

Composed of students at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, the Westminster Symphonic Choir has recorded and performed with virtually every major orchestra and internationally known conductor of the last 85 years. Recognized as one of the world’s leading choral ensembles, the choir has sung over 300 performances with the New York Philharmonic alone.

In addition to these performances with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the ensemble’s 2007–08 season includes performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and with Neeme Järvi and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra at Patriots Theater in Trenton and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. In May the ensemble will perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, “Symphony of a Thousand,” with Christoph Eschenbach and The Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.

Additionally, the 32-voice Westminster Choir that forms the core of the Symphonic Choir will perform Bach’s St. Matthew Passion led by Kurt Masur in February. Chorus-in-residence for the Spoleto Festival USA since 1977, the ensemble will present a concert tour of Texas in January and a series of performances in Michigan in March. Westminster Choir College is one of four colleges of Rider University, whose main campus is in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. A professional college of music with a unique choral emphasis, Westminster prepares students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for careers in teaching, sacred music and performance.