CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Staatskapelle Berlin

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Saturday, May 16th, 2009 at 8:00 PM

“keenly sensitive playing”—New York Observer

Mahler refused to call Das Lied von der Erde his Ninth Symphony out of fear that—like the ninth symphonies of Beethoven and Bruckner before him—it would be his last. Using German translations of Tang Dynasty poetry, Mahler combines words and music to capture the ephemeral nature of life’s pleasures. Opening the concert is a luminous Adagio, the only movement of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony that he lived to finish.

We regret to announce that the pre-concert lecture by Michael Beckerman, scheduled for Saturday, May 16 at 7 PM in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall has been cancelled.

Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim, Music Director and Conductor
Michelle DeYoung, Mezzo-Soprano
Klaus Florian Vogt, Tenor

MAHLER Adagio from Symphony No. 10 in F-sharp Major
MAHLER Das Lied von der Erde

Perspectives: Daniel Barenboim

Program is approximately 1 hour, 45 minutes, including one intermission.

Program Notes:

Created by someone conducting in the United States, composing in central Europe, and setting poems from eighth-century China, this work has strong claims on its title as “The Song of the Earth.” However, the voices singing here —those of the soloists and those also of the orchestra —are always and unmistakably Mahler’s, even if this is partly a new Mahler we encounter here. Nineteen hundred and seven, the year before he started this work, had seen his life changed. He had moved the center of his conducting activities from the court opera in Vienna to the Met in New York, which offered him a higher fee for fewer performances. Against that positive development, he had lost his elder daughter, Putzi, from diphtheria in the summer at the age of four, and he himself had been diagnosed with a heart condition. He felt himself from this point to be dying and made in Das Lied von der Erde a great review of life —the tone is retrospective from the first —culminating in a prolonged farewell.

Also in 1907 he had been present at two important Schoenberg premieres, those of the younger composer’s First Quartet and First Chamber Symphony, and perhaps these prompted him to consider lighter, more dislocated textures. There could have been some impulse, too, from Chinese music, of which he reportedly took the trouble to listen to some early recordings before setting his Chinese poems. An East Asian tone is evoked by some use of the pentatonic scale (having five steps) and certain color effects, done with remarkable restraint and sophistication.

In their millennium-long journey from Tang-dynasty China to Mahler’s composing hut in the South Tirol, the poems underwent some changes. Mahler’s source was Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute), a small volume of 80 poems published by the German poet-orientalist Hans Bethge in 1907. Bethge, knowing no Chinese, worked from translations by Hans Heilman of versions in French by Judith Gautier and the Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys. Mahler chose four poems attributed to the most celebrated Chinese poet of the period, Li Bai (also known as Li Po, or Li Tai Po), which he placed first, third, fourth, and fifth in his sequence, though no Chinese original has been traced for the third poem (ironically the most oriental in Mahler’s setting), which may have been Gautier’s invention. For his second movement, Mahler took a poem by Chang Tsi, and in his finale he combined poems by Mong Kao Jen and Wang Wei, but in every case he adapted the texts transmitted by Bethge. Even before writing any music, or in the process of writing music, he made the words his own.

As with his Ninth Symphony the following year, he drafted the work during his summer vacation at Toblach, between June and the start of September, and worked up the final score during the ensuing concert season in New York. It was only during this later process that the piece achieved its definitive title.

Mahler called his work a symphony, and must have chosen and changed the texts partly with an ear toward symphonic form. The first song, for example, has certain qualities of a sonata allegro (repeated exposition, with two contrasting thematic areas), but one abruptly curtailed; then come alternating slow movements and scherzos, followed by an adagio finale which, as in the composer’s Third Symphony and his Ninth yet to come, seems to be the inevitable destination: this finale, “Der Abschied,” is about as long as all the other movements put together. There is also another kind of symphonic dialogue going on, across the vast space between the voices. Both seek escape from the world, but where the tenor’s route leads ebulliently through the neck of a bottle, the baritone (or alternatively mezzo-soprano) is singing of evening and autumn as of death.

Spring, rather, is the season in which the tenor delights, the spring he evokes in his first song, with a lyrical change from the vociferousness that is almost forced upon him by the heavy orchestration, and again in his third, “Der Trunkene im Frühling.” Yet even here death is present, defined by defiance. “Dark the state of living, and of death!” goes the refrain of the opening song, heard three times in different minor keys. And the tenor’s other two songs, exotic and humorous, are touched with the same clouds.

But it is the other singer who stands at the work’s heart: alone (“Der Einsame im Herbst”), removed from the thrill of sensual pleasure (“Von der Schönheit”), and on the point of departure (“Der Abschied”), a departure that will last an eternity.

—Paul Griffiths
© The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim, Music Director and 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—has 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 symphony 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.

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 Musikverien 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.

Klaus Florian Vogt, Tenor