CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Staatskapelle Berlin

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 8:00 PM

“outstanding”—Sunday Age

“Nature herself acquires a voice and tells secrets so profound that they are perhaps only glimpsed in dreams!” proclaimed the composer. From the exuberant march that ends the first movement—“Summer marches in”—to the glorious concluding Adagio— “What love tells me”—Mahler created a transcendent musical canvas of man’s place in this mysterious but beneficent world with his monumental Third Symphony.

Staatskapelle Berlin
Pierre Boulez, Conductor
Eberhard Friedrich, Chorus Director
Michelle DeYoung, Mezzo-Soprano
Women of the Westminster Symphonic Choir
Joe Miller, Conductor
The American Boychoir
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, Music Director

MAHLER Symphony No. 3 in D Minor

Perspectives: Daniel Barenboim

Program Notes:

Through most of the 1890s Mahler was busy with a series of orchestral songs, based on a collection of folk poetry published by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn). Mahler never made any sharp differentiation between the two genres of song and symphony that constitute all of his mature output. Of his eleven symphonies (including Das Lied von der Erde and the unfinished Tenth), six include voice parts. Among these, Nos. 2, 3, and 4 are often referred to as the Wunderhorn symphonies, because each of them includes a setting of a poem from the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection.

Originally, the vast scheme of the Third Symphony was to end with not one but two Wunderhorn settings. Evidently Mahler became convinced that this would be too much of a good thing even by his monumental standards, and when the Third Symphony was completed in 1896 it ended with a purely orchestral slow movement. (The discarded seventh movement was pressed into service instead as the finale of the Fourth Symphony, under the title Das himmlische Leben, or Life in Heaven.) What has come down to us is still a six-movement work, laid out in two parts and lasting more than an hour and a half. Its sheer physical size, like its extraordinary expressive range, is no accident, but simply a realization of Mahler’s universe-encompassing conception of the symphonic medium. He planned it, he observed in a letter to the soprano Anna von Mildgnburg, as a vast celebration of nature, life, and love:

Just imagine a work of such magnitude that it actually mirrors the whole world–one is, so to speak, only an instrument, played on by the universe. . . . My symphony will be something the like of which the world has never yet heard! . . . In it the whole of nature finds a voice. . . . Some passages in it seem so uncanny to me that I can hardly recognize them as my own work.

The cosmic picture he was aiming at led Mahler at first to put in words a programmatic scheme for the whole symphony, which read as follows:

THE JOYFUL KNOWLEDGE
A Summer Morning’s Dream
I Summer marches in
II What the meadow flowers tell me
III What the forest creatures tell me
IV What night tells me (mankind)
V What the morning bells tell me (the angels)
VI What love tells me
VII Life in Heaven (what the child tells me)

The last of these tableaux was, as we have seen, transferred to the Fourth Symphony. “A Summer Morning’s Dream” was changed in due course to “A Summer Noonday’s Dream,” “What the forest creatures tell me” became “What the twilight tells me,” and the phrase “Pan awakes” was added to the beginning of the scheme. But then Mahler decided, as he has done with the First and Second Symphonies, to let the Third stand without an official program. The original headings nevertheless remain helpful as clues to the music’s expressive intent, even if they are also liable to some misunderstanding.

In particular, the “love” referred to in the title of the sixth movement needs clarification, which Mahler supplied when he told Anna von Mildenburg:

It’s a matter of a different kind of love from what you imagine. The motto to this movement reads:

Vater, sie an die Wunden mein!
Kein Wesen lass verloren sein!
(Father, look at these wounds of mine!
Let not one creature of thine be lost!)

. . . I could almost call the movement “What God tells me.” And truly in the sense that God can only be understood as love. And so my work is a musical poem embracing all stages of development in a stepwise ascent. It begins with inanimate nature and ascends to the love of God.

It is in this universal context that the role of the meadow flowers and the forest creatures must be understood. In a letter to Dr Richard Batka, Mahler remarked that separate performances of the “flowers” movement given before the symphony was complete

will doubtless present me to the public as the “sensuous,” perfumed “singer of nature.” That this nature hides within itself everything that is terrifying, great, and also lovely (which is exactly what I wanted to express in the entire work, in a sort of evolutionary development)–of course no one ever understands this. It always strikes me as odd that most people, when they speak of “nature,” think only of flowers, little birds, and woodsy smells. No one knows the god Dionysus, the great Pan.

Within the symphony’s dramatic arc, the element of Dionysian terror–of Panic in the etymological significance of the word–makes several awe-inspiring incursions. It is to be heard in the huge chords that punctuate the first movement, which the great Mahler scholar Deryck Cooke memorably described as

the most original and flabbergasting thing Mahler ever conceived. To express the primeval force of nature burgeoning out of winter into summer, he built an outsize, proliferating sonata structure out of a plethora of “primitive” material: a rugged F Major-D Minor march tune for unison horns, like a great summons to awake; deep soft brass chords, eloquent of hidden power, sullen D Minor growls on trombones, like primordial inertia; bayings of horns, upsurgings of basses, shrieks on woodwind, subterranean rumblings of percussion, and gross, uncouth trombone themes, like monstrous prehistoric voices.

It is implicit in the piccolo fanfares, played out of tempo, that suggest a kind of inimical birdsong (Alfred Hitchcock before his time), and it erupts again toward the end of the “forest creatures” movement, when the echoes of a long-drawn, shimmering offstage posthorn solo redolent of high summer in the deep woodland are brusquely thrust aside by the eruption of a fortissimo E-flat-Minor chord that fills the orchestral landscape: so close, in Mahler’s conception, is the enchantment of nature to the visceral fear that lies beneath it.

The work’s remaining explicit Knaben Wunderhorn movement is the setting of Es sungen drei Engel einen süssen Gesang (Three angels were singing a sweet song) for boys’ and women’s voices. Though purely instrumental, the “forest creatures” scherzo is based on the thematic material of one of Mahler’s earliest Wunderhorn settings, Ablösung im Sommer, which tells the story of the cuckoo’s death. The other textual element in the symphony comes from a very different source: Nietzsche’s Midnight Song, which furnishes mankind’s nocturnal questionings in the fourth movement. Powerful out of all proportion to its brevity and dynamic restraint, this is (to quote Cooke’s unimprovable description once again)

one of the stillest things in all music, with its cry of a night bird (oboe glissando) and its long-held contralto notes backed by thirds on trombones echoed by piccolos.

It is after such mysteries, and after the carol-like naivety of the succeeding angels’ song, that “love” presents its grand, unhurried apotheosis. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony might well serve as an illustration of the musicologist Sir Donald Tovey’s axiom that, once the human voice has been introduced into a score, any return to purely instrumental writing will be anticlimactic. But every rule worthy of the name has an exception, and Mahler’s Third Symphony provides an utterly convincing one. Try to imagine the opening of this sumptuous finale following on the end, not of the two vocal movements, but of the orchestral scherzo, and it will surely be evident that the sense of haven-within-reach would in that scenario be sadly missing.

Following the dying vocal bell-syllables of the fifth movement without a break, this full-throated orchestral finale is at once reminiscent of traditional 19th-century religious styles, and prophetic of the equally expansive slow finale of Mahler’s own Ninth Symphony. Yet this conclusion, close to unique in the composer’s output, contains none of the emotional indirectness and underlying irony that render the Adagio of the Ninth–and indeed almost all of his music–so poignantly ambivalent. More than any other movement in Mahler, the finale of the Third Symphony lives its feelings without camouflage or self-defense, and thereby communicates them to the listener with an immediacy as consumingly vivid as any he ever achieved.

—Bernard Jacobson
© The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Staatskapelle Berlin
Pierre Boulez, Conductor
With almost 450 years of tradition, Staatskapelle Berlin is one of the oldest orchestras in the world. Originally founded in 1570 as a court orchestra by Prince-Elector Joachim II Hector of Brandenburg, and at first solely dedicated to carrying out musical services for the court, the ensemble expanded its activities with the founding of the Royal Court Opera in 1742 by Frederick the Great. Ever since, the orchestra has been closely tied to Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

Many important musicians have conducted the orchestra: Gaspare Spontini, Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Felix von Weingartner, Richard Strauss, Erich Kleiber, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, Franz Konwitschny, and Otmar Suitner are just a few of the conductors who have decidedly influenced the instrumental and interpretive culture of Staatskapelle Berlin. The works of Richard Wagner—who himself conducted the Königlich Preußische Hofkapelle in 1844 at the premiere of his Flying Dutchman and in 1876 during the preparations for the Berlin premiere of Tristan und Isolde—have represented a pillar of the repertoire of the Staatsoper and its orchestra for some time.

Since 1992, Daniel Barenboim has served as the orchestra’s general music director; in 2000 the orchestra named him “Conductor for Life.” He has led the orchestra throughout Europe, Israel, Japan, and China, as well as North and South America. Performances of Beethoven’s complete symphonies and piano concertos in Vienna, Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo; the smphony cycles of Schumann and Brahms, respectively; and the three-part performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle in Japan are some of the most outstanding events of recent years. As part of the Staatsoper’s Festtage 2007, the symphonies and orchestral songs of Gustav Mahler were performed under the batons of Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez at Berlin’s Philharmonie.

Staatskapelle Berlin was named Orchestra of the Year in 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2008 by the journal Opernwelt; in 2003 the orchestra was awarded the Furtwängler Prize. A constantly growing number of recordings in both the operatic and symphonic repertoires document the work of the orchestra: The 2002 recording of Beethoven symphonies was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque, the 2003 recording of Wagner’s Tannhäuser was awarded a Grammy, and the 2007 live recording of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony was awarded an Echo Prize.

In the Orchesterakademie, founded in 1997, young musicians gather professional experience in both opera and concert performance, mentored by members of the Staatskapelle. Furthermore, many Staatskapelle musicians volunteer at Musikkindergarten Berlin, an initiative founded by Daniel Barenboim. Staatskapelle members also dedicate themselves to working in chamber music formations, as well as in the ensemble Preußens Hofmusik, focusing on the Berlin music tradition from the 18th century. This rich musical activity can be experienced in several concert series held at the Staatsoper’s Apollo-Saal.


Pierre Boulez is one of the most important musical and intellectual figures of our time, currently serving as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus. He was named principal guest conductor of the CSO in March 1995, and served in that position until 2006 when he became Conductor Emeritus.

A native of Montbrison, France, Mr. Boulez pursued studies in piano, composition, and choral conducting at the Paris Conservatory. In 1953–1954, he founded the Concerts du Petit Marigny, a series dedicated to modern music, which later became the Domaine Musical. He subsequently was involved with musical analysis, and taught in Darmstadt, Germany, and at Basel University in Switzerland. In 1962–1963 he was a visiting professor at Harvard University, and in 1976 he became a professor at the Collège de France.

Mr. Boulez began his conducting career in 1958 with the Southwest Radio Orchestra in Baden-Baden, Germany. From 1969 to 1972 he was principal guest conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. In 1971 he became both chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and music director of the New York Philharmonic, a position he held until 1977.

Mr. Boulez’s difference of opinion about state intervention in the arts as espoused by André Malraux led him into voluntary exile for several years. He returned to France in 1974, when the government invited him to create and direct a music research center at the Centre Pompidou Centre. From the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique / Musique (IRCAM) sprang the Ensemble Intercontemporain, one of the world’s finest contemporary music ensembles. In 1991, Mr. Boulez resigned as conductor of the ensemble while continuing as its president.

The compositions of Pierre Boulez are widely performed, including Le Marteau sans maître, Pli selon pli, three piano sonatas, Eclat/Multiples, Le Visage nuptial, Répons, Notations, and … explosante-fixe … . He has also published five books about music. His awards include honorary doctorates from Leeds, Cambridge, Basel, and Oxford universities, among others; Commander of the British Empire; and Knight of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Mr. Boulez’s discography includes prize-winning recordings of Parsifal and Berg’s Lulu. He has 26 Grammy Awards to his credit.

Eberhard Friedrich, Chorus Director
After studying conducting with Helmuth Rilling in Frankfurt, Eberhard Friedrich was appointed chorus master of the Theater der Stadt Koblenz in 1986. He also served in the same capacity for the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden beginning in 1991. Mr. Friedrich led the Baden-Württemberg State Children’s Choir, and fulfilled guest engagements in Krakow, Talinn, and Vilnius, in addition to appearances at the International Bach Academy in Stuttgart, and with the Prague Philharmonic Choir and the Bavarian Radio Chorus.

Mr. Friedrich has worked closely with the Bayreuth Festival since 1993; in 2000 he was appointed chorus master of the Bayreuth Festival Chorus. His association with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden began in 1995; after various guest appearances, he was appointed chorus master in 1998. Among his many accomplishments, Mr. Friedrich prepared the Staatsoper Chorus for a Grammy-winning recording of Tannhäuser, and for Peter Mussbach’s new production of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron during the 2004 Festtage—both under the baton of Daniel Barenboim. That year the Staatsoper Chorus was also named Chorus of the Year in a Opernwelt magazine critic’s poll.

Michelle DeYoung, Mezzo-Soprano
Michelle DeYoung has established herself as one of the most exciting artists of her generation. She is in demand throughout the world, appearing regularly with the New York Philharmonic; the Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras; The Cleveland Orchestra; San Francisco Symphony; the MET Orchestra; Vienna Philharmonic; BBC Symphony Orchestra; Philharmonia Orchestra; Orchestre de Paris; Staatskapelle Berlin; and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In addition, she has performed at such prestigious festivals as Ravinia, Tanglewood, Saito Kinen, Edinburgh, and Lucerne.

Equally at home on the opera stage, Ms. DeYoung has won acclaim for her performances of Fricka, Sieglinde, and Waltraute in the Ring cycle; Kundry in Parsifal; Venus in Tannhäuser; Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde; Dido in Les Troyens, and Marguerite in La damnation de Faust. She has sung in the great opera houses of the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Bayreuth Festival, Staatsoper Berlin, Opéra de Paris, and the Tokyo Opera. She most recently created the role of the Shaman in Tan Dun’s The First Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera.

Ms. DeYoung’s most recent recording is Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Bernard Haitink (CSO Resound). She has won Grammy Awards for her recordings of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and Symphony No. 3 (SFS), and Berlioz’s Les Troyens (LSO Live!). Other albums in her growing discography include Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1, “Jeremiah” (Chandos), and Mahler’s Das klagende Lied (BMG) and Das Lied von der Erde (Reference Recordings). Her first solo disc was released on the EMI label.

This season, Ms. DeYoung’s many engagements have included her debut at the Los Angeles Opera as Fricka in Achim Freyer’s new productions of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre and returns to the Metropolitan Opera, Staatsoper Berlin, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and the Musikverein in Vienna. This summer she makes her house and role debut as Eboli in Don Carlos at the Cincinnati Opera, and appears at the Ravinia, Aspen, and Grand Teton festivals; next season, she returns to the Los Angeles Opera for the complete Ring cycle and appears at Carnegie Hall with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

Women of the Westminster Symphonic Choir
Joe Miller, Conductor
Composed of students at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, the Westminster Symphonic Choir has recorded and performed with major orchestras under virtually every internationally known conductor of the last 75 years. Recognized as one of the world’s leading choral ensembles, the choir has sung more than 300 performances with the New York Philharmonic alone.

The ensemble’s 2008–2009 season has included a series of performances with the New York Philharmonic: Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, conducted by Gilbert Kaplan; Handel’s Messiah, conducted by Ton Koopman; Mendelssohn’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, conducted by Kurt Masur; and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, conducted by Lorin Maazel.

Recent seasons have included performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, conducted by David Robertson, and Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Dresden Philharmonic, conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.

Each year 40 members of the Westminster Symphonic Choir are selected for the Westminster Choir, which has been the chorus-inresidence for the Spoleto Festival USA since 1977. Its most recent recording is Heaven to Earth, recorded with conductor laureate Joseph Flummerfelt and released on the AVIE label.

Westminster Choir College is a division of Rider University’s Westminster College of the Arts. A professional college of music with a choral emphasis, Westminster Choir College prepares students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for careers in teaching, sacred music, and performance.


Joe Miller is conductor of two of America’s most renowned choral ensembles: the Westminster Choir and the 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 preparing the Westminster Symphonic Choir for its orchestral performances in New York, his 2008–2009 season includes conducting the Illinois All-State Choir and the California All-State Choir. He will also be a presenter with Chorus America at the National Collegiate Choral Conductors (NCCO) Conference in Cincinnati and the headliner at the American Choral Directors Association’s Virginia Summer Conference.

Mr. Miller led the Westminster Choir on a concert tour of the Midwest in January, and they will travel to the Spoleto Festival USA in summer 2009 for their annual residency. He will return to Princeton to conduct the two-week Westminster Chamber Choir program and the Westminster Choral Festival in July.

Joe Miller earned a master’s degree and a doctorate degree in choral conducting from the University of Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music education and voice from the University of Tennessee.

The American Boychoir
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, Music Director
The American Boychoir, under the direction of Litton-Lodal Music Director Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, is regarded as the premier concert boys’ choir in the US and one of the finest boychoirs in the world. Boys from grades four through eight—reflecting the ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity of our nation—come from nine states and four foreign countries to pursue a rigorous musical and academic curriculum at The American Boychoir School, the only non-sectarian boys’ choir school in the nation. Founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1937, The American Boychoir has been located in Princeton, New Jersey, since 1950. In addition to maintaining an active national and international touring schedule, the ensemble performs and records regularly with such world-class artists and ensembles as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, soprano Jessye Norman, pop diva Beyoncé, and Sir Paul McCartney.

Highlights of recent seasons include performances of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Kurt Masur; Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish,” with The Philadelphia Orchestra; and a tour to the Czech Republic in June 2008 as a featured ensemble in the Second International Boys and Men’s Choral Festival.

The American Boychoir has been extensively recorded and broadcast on radio and television, with some 45 commercial recordings to its name. A recent CD, entitled Harmony: American Songs of Faith, was released in 2007 on the boychoir’s own label, Albemarle Records.


Fernando Malvar-Ruiz was appointed Litton-Lodal Music Director of The American Boychoir in July 2004. Since then, he and the choir have toured throughout the US and around the world. He has prepared the choir for performances at the Academy Awards, the Tanglewood Music Festival, and the U.S. Open tennis tournament, as well as for performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, under such conductors as James Levine, Pierre Boulez, Kurt Masur, and Christoph Eschenbach.

A widely sought-after guest conductor, lecturer, and clinician, and a recognized expert in the adolescent male evolving voice, Mr. Malvar-Ruiz served as artistic director and guest conductor for the 2005 World Children’s Choir Festival In Hong Kong. He has conducted honor choirs at ACDA regional conventions and at OAKE national conventions. For the past 12 summers, he has been an instructor in the master’s program in music education at the Kodàly Institute at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches conducting and musicianship. In 2008 he became a member of the faculty at the Academia Internacional de Verano de Dirección Coral y Pedagogía Musical in Las Palmas, Spain.

Mr. Malvar-Ruiz received bachelor’s degrees in piano performance and music theory from the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música in Madrid, and a master’s degree in choral conducting from Ohio State University; he also attended the Kodály Institute in Kécskemet, Hungary, where he was awarded the Sharolta Kodály Scholarship. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in musical arts from the University of Illinois.