Symphony Preview: Sounds of joy and despair at Powell Hall Saturday and Sunday, November 22 and 23

There are only two pieces on the program this Saturday and Sunday at the symphony, and even though they were written less than 60 years apart, the contrast between them is so stark that they might as well be from different worlds.

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Schumann in 1850
en.wikipedia.org

The concerts open with Robert Schumann's "Cello Concerto in A minor," op. 129. It dates from 1850, which SLSO program annotator Paul Schiavo describes as "a watershed year" for the composer. "His 40th birthday was celebrated with a concert organized by his admirers," writes Mr. Schiavo, "and after what seemed an interminable series of delays his only opera, Genoveva, was finally produced in Leipzig. At about the same time, the composer accepted the directorship of the municipal orchestra and chorus in Düsseldorf and in September moved with his family to that city on the Rhine. The Duüsseldorf appointment represented a significant professional advance for Schumann, and he was cheered at the prospect of finally gaining some measure of the recognition which had thus far eluded him."

Schumann's joy would be short lived—he would try to commit suicide three and a half years later by throwing himself into the Rhine—but for time being the composer was on top of the world, resulting in music that was, in the words of the late British musicologist Eric Sams, "as secure and buoyant as the Rhine itself, with hardly a hint of the dark chill depths to come."

That said, the concerto wasn't all that well received, despite the skill evident in its composition. As with the earlier piano concerto, Schumann disdained the kind of flashy virtuoso writing that typified concertos in the mid-19th century (Liszt and company were very much in fashion). Worse yet, he disapproved of the applause between movements (which was commonplace at the time), so the three sections of the concerto follow each other without pause. Schumann didn't even call it a concerto originally; the autograph score describes it as a Konzertstück (concert piece) rather than Konzert (concerto). Clara Schumann loved the work, but the composer himself seems to have had doubts, not even sending to his publishers until 1854. It wasn't performed publicly until 1860, almost four years after the composer's death.

The lack of obvious fireworks in the cello part doesn't mean that this piece is easy to perform, though. Quite the opposite: it requires for a combination of technical facility and artistic sensitivity that asks a lot from the soloist. As cellist Jan Vogler noted in a 2012 interview, although he had already performed the concerto over 60 times, he was just getting "to the point where he can see the light."

The soloist this weekend, Principal Cello Daniel Lee, certainly looks like the right man for the job. As I wrote in my April 2012 review of his performance of the Dvorak concerto (which, like the Schumann, requires nimble hands and a warm heart), Mr. Lee combines technical proficiency with an emotional openness that allows him to be completely within the moment at every point in the music.

Mahler in 1907
Photo: Moritz Nähr
en.wikipedia.org

If Schumann's concerto comes from a high point in his life, Mahler's "Das Lied on der Erde" ("The Song of the Earth") comes from a low point in his. When Mahler bean work on the piece in the summer of 1907, his eldest daughter has just died of scarlet fever at the age of four and the composer himself had just been diagnosed with the heart condition that would lead to his demise four years later. Suddenly death—which had always been a theme in Mahler's music—became very personal.

Scored for large orchestra and two singers (typically tenor and mezzo-soprano, although Mahler allows for the substitution of a baritone in the second, fourth, and sixth songs), "Das Lied" is essentially a vocal symphony that takes its texts from Hans Bethge's "The Chinese Flute," a German-language re-write of English, French and German translations of some ancient Chinese poems. Further edited and re-written by Mahler, the lyrics contemplate a variety of aspects of life and death. "Every mood," writes Tony Duggan at musicweb-international.com "from cynical and drunken hedonism to serene and Zen-like stasis gets covered in the course of the hour this work takes. At the end, the message is that, since the beauties and mysteries of the earth renew themselves year after year, our own passing should not be feared but accepted calmly and without rancour. The earth, the world and nature goes on without us."

Too true. In particular, the last movement—"Das Abschied" ("The Farewell")—is possibly one of the most emotionally powerful things you will ever encounter in a concert hall. In it, the narrator's farewell to a friend becomes a farewell to life itself: "Die liebe Erde allüberall Blüht auf im Lenz und grünt aufs neu! Allüberall und ewig blauen licht die Fernen! Ewig... ewig..." ("Everywhere the good earth blossoms in spring and turns green once again! Everywhere and forever, distant spaces shine their blue light! Forever...forever..."). "The music of this closing movement," writes Mr. Schiavo "is...by turns heartbroken and serene, and this remarkable dualism persists even in the unresolved sixth—the most gentle of dissonances—which colors its final chord."

This weekend's soloists, Susan Graham and Paul Graves, have impressive but very different resumes. Ms. Graham's is heavily tilted towards opera while Mr. Graves appears to have substantial oratorio and concert experience. That should make for a nice balance in a work that straddles the concert and opera stages. Although he never wrote an opera, Mahler was a composer with an infallible sense for the dramatic.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra along with mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, tenor Paul Groves, and cellist Daniel Lee in Schumann's "Cello Concerto" and Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde" on Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., November 22 and 23. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis public radio at 90.7 FM, HD 1, and via the station web site.

Pro-Life

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, Women of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, and St. Louis Children’s Chorus conducted by David Robertson
What: Mahler, Symphony No. 3
When: October 5 and 6, 2012
Where: Powell Hall

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A warmly expansive and well-played Mahler Symphony No. 3 this weekend by David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony was enhanced by fine solo work and the voices of the St. Louis Children's Chorus and the Women of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus. This is music you don't hear that often because of the size and disposition of the forces, so the decision to present it was a welcome one, to say the least.

Many composers have taken their inspiration from nature, but it took the vision of Mahler to turn that inspiration into a massive six-movement pantheistic hymn. Clocking in at close to 100 minutes, this is no jolly pastoral picture in the mode of Beethoven or Dvorak, but rather a vast expression of what George Bernard Shaw (who, ironically, considered Mahler "expensively second-rate") described as the “Life Force”, moving from primal chaos to perfection. Granted, Shaw’s perfection was human while Mahler’s is divine, but the journeys are similar.

The 3rd presents its share of interpretive challenges. To pick just one example, the episodic first movement (originally titled “Pan Awakes: Summer Marches In”) could without a strong hand at the tiller easily degenerate into a series of musical tableaux. As conductor Bruno Walter (a strong Mahler advocate) once noted, “[i]n regard to this one movement—and to this one alone—I must admit that the effort to take it in musically is frequently thwarted by the intrusion of non-musical matter, of fantastic images, that break the musical texture.” Mr. Robertson held it all together, though, and brought it to a rousing conclusion, assisted by some first-rate solo work from (among others) Timothy Myers on trombone and Cally Banham on English horn.

The audience clearly loved it. A ripple of spontaneous applause broke out, prompting a smiling Mr. Robertson to turn to the house and say “it’s OK”, after which the ripple became a wave.

And so it continued for the remainder of the evening. The “Tempo di Menuetto” second movement (original title: “What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me”) was appropriately bucolic. The more boisterous third movement “Scherzando” (“What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me”) with its nostalgic offstage posthorn interludes (played in this case by a trumpet) was a nice study in contrasts.

The following two vocal movements bring humanity into the picture. The first is a nocturnal setting for contralto of lines from Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra about how Joy goes deeper and lasts longer than Woe (performed with great feeling by mezzo Susan Graham). The second is a sunny contrasting setting of a poem from Das Knaben Wunderhorn (Youth’s Magic Horn, a collection of folk poetry that dominated Mahler’s work for much of the 1890s) about how St. Peter (sung by the soloist from the previous movement) is readily forgiven by a loving Christ.

The angels are portrayed by the women’s and children’s choruses, with the latter mostly singing “bimm, bamm” in imitation of the tuned bells also called for in the score. In keeping with Mahler’s requirements, the bells and kids were placed house right behind the dress circle boxes, providing a nice antiphonal effect for those seated in the orchestra and dress circle. That poses a bit of a challenge for both the performers and conductor, but Mr. Robertson and company came through beautifully.

The final movement is perhaps the toughest nut to crack for both the conductor and the audience. Unfolding with deliberate slowness (it’s marked “Slow. Peacefully. With feeling.”) over a half-hour, this remarkable movement was seen by the composer as “the peak, the highest level from which one can view the world.” It’s serene, all embracing, and, although it requires a lot from an audience that has already gone through a substantial musical sojourn, it ultimately leads to a powerful and ecstatic conclusion that makes it all worthwhile.

For me, Friday night’s performance just missed that last bit of ecstasy. I don’t know how much of that was Mr. Robertson’s somewhat leisurely approach to the work as a whole and how much might have been what sounded rather like fatigue from some of the players, particularly in the brass section (from which much is demanded). I couldn’t help wonder whether it might have been best to put an intermission after the first movement (as is sometimes done) to give both players and audience members a chance to rest and reflect.

That said, this Mahler 3rd is a darned impressive achievement that bodes well for the rest of the season. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

The season continues next week (October 12–14) with a program of Beethoven, Ravel, and Debussy with guest conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and pianist Pascal Rogé.  For more information: stlsymphony.org