Program Information

Artist Bios

CHRISTOPH KÖNIG conductor

JENNIFER CHECK soprano

Program Notes

BY LAURIE SHULMAN, ©2010

FIRST NORTH AMERICAN SERIAL RIGHTS ONLY

Four Last Songs

Richard Strauss

Born June 11, 1864 in Munich

Died September 8, 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria

Richard Strauss had a lifelong love affair with the human voice. He married a singer—soprano Pauline de Ahna—and while he concentrated far more on opera than song after 1900, his profound understanding of singing lent strength and substance to all his vocal compositions. Thus, it is fitting that his final work should have been this set of four orchestral songs, merging solo song with operatic orchestra in a magnificent musical valedictory.

Post-war exile

Shortly after the end of World War II, in October 1945, the Strausses went to Switzerland in voluntary exile. He was unable to return to his homeland until the Denazification committee had cleared his record. In spring 1948, he and Pauline settled in Montreux. Now well into his 80s, Strauss had not written a song since the early years of the war. His discovery of Joseph Eichendorff’s poem “Im Abendrot” (“At Sunset”) must have struck a harmonious chord—he commenced work on a setting for voice and orchestra almost immediately.

 “Im Abendrot” is drawn from Spring and Love, a collection of his love poetry. Its subject matter—an elderly couple contemplating death after a rich and full life—resonated with Strauss. He completed the score in May 1948.

That summer, a friend sent him a volume of poetry by Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse. Strauss decided to expand the single song to a group. “Frühling” (“Spring”), the earliest and most romantic of the Hesse poems he selected, was complete by mid-July; “Beim Schlafengehen” (“Going to Sleep”) followed in a matter of weeks, and “September” the following month.

Comfort and fulfillment in contemplation of old age and death

“Frühling” celebrates the beauties and joys of spring. Strauss illustrates it with an exultant, sinuous melody. “September,” the first text to introduce the idea of world-weariness, is the most overtly Wagnerian of the four. Divided strings emphasize the lush texture; a delicious horn solo delivers the last word. “Beim Schlafengehen” features a melismatic violin solo between the soprano’s stanzas, which Norman Del Mar called a symbol of “the winged nocturnal journey of the soul.”

The work concludes with “Im Abendrot.” Strauss' rich tapestry of orchestration is given eloquent expression in the instrumental prelude and postlude, which are most substantial in this song. At the mention of the larks’ ascent, the flutes soar in a riot of airborne birdsong, one of the composers’ most ecstatic musical illustrations. After the last question has been asked and the word “Tod” (“death”) has been pronounced, Strauss quotes the transfiguration motive from his 1889 tone poem, Death and Transfiguration.

The scoring changes slightly in each of the four songs. To perform the set, the orchestra requires four flutes (two doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones (third doubling bass trombone), tuba, timpani, harp, celesta and strings. Timing: 24 minutes.

Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor

Gustav Mahler

Born July 7, 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia

Died May 18, 1911 in Vienna, Austria

Middle-period Mahler: instruments without voices

Mahler’s symphonies divide into two principal categories: those that are exclusively instrumental and those that employ voice. His first symphony was instrumental; the next three incorporated soloists and chorus in varying degrees. For his fifth through seventh symphonies, he returned to the concept of a purely instrumental symphony. The eighth embraces voices again; the final two (including the unfinished 10th) are instrumental.

Historians have traditionally regarded the fifth, sixth and seventh symphonies as the culmination of Mahler’s middle period. The break from vocal resources in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony was an affirmation of his commitment to absolute music, and he denied that any specific program or extra-musical association applied to the music of the Fifth.

Whirlwind romance, passionate symphony

The background of the Fifth Symphony is intimately tied to Mahler’s romance with Alma Maria Schindler, whom he married in 1902. Mahler began work on the symphony during the summer of 1901. During the season he was exceedingly busy as conductor of the Vienna Court Opera, and he tended to do most of his composing during the summers. When he met Alma at the home of mutual friends in November, he was 41, and she was 22. Well-educated, well-born and musically talented, Alma was considered one of Vienna’s great beauties. Mahler was smitten, and the love affair developed rapidly. Barely four months later, she was pregnant and they were married. According to Mahler’s close friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner, he proposed to Alma by sending her the Adagietto of this symphony. The movement is his love song to his bride, and one cannot help but think that the entire work is at least in part inspired by the passion she brought forth in him.

The newlyweds spent their first summer together on holiday in Maiernigg, Austria, where Mahler continued work on the symphony. He completed the orchestration the following winter and conducted the first performance in October 1904. Dissatisfied, Mahler began to revise. A letter to Alma the week of the premiere reads:

The Scherzo is the very devil of a movement! I see it is in for a peck of troubles! Conductors for the next 50 years will all take it too fast and make nonsense of it; and the public—oh, heavens, what are they to make of this chaos of which new worlds are for ever being engendered? … What are they to say to this primeval music, this foaming, roaring, raging sea of sound? ... Oh, that I might give my symphony its first performance 50 years after my death!

He was to continue the revision process for the rest of his life. The version performed today was not published until 1964.

The conducting connection

Mahler’s extensive experience as a conductor gave him an encyclopedic knowledge and understanding of the orchestra’s capabilities. He took pains to notate interpretive details. Like most of his scores, the Fifth Symphony is scrupulously marked. It indicates subtle changes of tempo and dynamics and the articulation of individual instruments, as well as descriptive adjectives intended to shape the musical character of a particular passage.

The sound and shape of Mahler

The Fifth Symphony shares certain characteristics with all of Mahler’s work. He uses an enormous orchestra with great imagination, often taxing the normal ranges of the individual instruments. The harmony stretches traditional tonality to its furthest limits; it is no accident that Mahler’s most influential protégés were Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. A third Mahlerian trademark is the formal variety. Mahler’s score specifically designates three parts and five movements to the symphony. The first two movements are bound together in spirit and by their musical material; they constitute the first part. The central scherzo is the second part. The last two movements are played without pause, forming the third part.

What makes the Fifth different from its predecessors? Mahler’s extraordinary use of counterpoint is distinguishing; he had been studying the music of Bach. Another unusual factor for Mahler is the work’s lack of reliance upon an extra-musical idea.

Affirmative finale: triumph trumps tragedy

D major returns to conclude the symphony: the key of both the second movement chorale and the Scherzo. Mahler indicates that the key choice is no accident by quoting from the earlier chorale. Formally, it is a rondo. Through several sections it binds together the energy of the first two movements, suffusing it with the positive warmth of the Scherzo and the tenderness of the Adagietto. Mahler opens the finale with diatonic, singable melodies that he later merges with the transcendent chorale of the second movement. Rather than restating one idea after another in retrospect, Mahler weaves the musical strengths of his symphony all together into a larger, stronger fabric. The effect is electrifying: brilliant polyphonic writing and a magnificent orchestral sonority. The dramatic weight has shifted from the first movement to the last movement; the emergence of triumph over tragedy is complete.

The score calls for four flutes (two doubling piccolos), three oboes (one doubling English Horn), three clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet and E-flat clarinet), three bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), six horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, triangle, glockenspiel, tam-tam, harp and strings. Timing: approximately 68 minutes.