Program
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor (1902)
- Trauermarsch. Im gemessenen Schritt. Streng. Wie ein Kondukt | At a measured pace. Strict. Like a funeral procession
- Stürmisch bewegt. Mit grösster Vehemenz | Moving stormily. With the greatest vehemence
- Scherzo. Kräftig, nicht zu schnell | Strong and not too fast
- Adagietto. Sehr langsam | Very slow
- Rondo-Finale. Allegro, Allegro giocoso
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
The Prelude and the Death of Isolde from the opera Tristan and Isolde (1857-1859)
Performers:
The musicAeterna Orchestra
Conductor — Teodor Currentzis
Details
The Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler is at the centre of the concert programme of the musicAeterna Orchestra conducted by Teodor Currentzis. This work became a manifesto of the mature style of the composer, who refused to use words and an extra-musical programme in the symphonic cycle. Human existential experience with its despair and hopes, love and loneliness, revelling in the beauty of the world and dread of its ruthlessness is conveyed by means of music alone.
In the years of the Symphony No. 5 creation, Mahler was already a recognized conductor, the fully empowered head of the Vienna Opera, a theatre reformer, but a deeply underestimated composer. He composed mostly in the summer, away from the urban fuss of Vienna. Before starting the Symphony No. 5, in the winter of 1901, he came to be on the verge of death due to sudden bleeding and was forced to severely limit his habits in the struggle for health from then on. In the figurative world of the symphony, not only the increased fear of death was reflected, but also an unprecedented love: in the autumn of 1901, Gustav Mahler met Alma Schindler. Admirers of the composer claimed that the famous third movement of the Symphony No. 5 — Adagietto — is a love message to his chosen one. Subsequently, this ‘song without words’ will be reflected in Mahler’s song ‘I am Lost to the World’ to the poems of Friedrich Rückert, in which the theme of love is inextricably intertwined with the theme of loneliness. Initially, the composer came up with a certain programme of the symphony, which he shared with his most trusted friends, but then he rejected it. The programme remained a mystery, and now the content of the unusual five-part cycle, grouped into three sections (the Funeral procession and Allegro, the titanic Scherzo, the poignant Adagietto and Rondo in the finale) serves as material for countless interpretations.
Along with Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, the Prelude and The Death of Isolde from Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde will be performed — an orchestral number, composed by the author himself for concert performance in 1862. This work contains all of Wagner’s discoveries in the field of working with the orchestra, thematism and musical form. Timbres and instrumental colours are mixed so thickly that are hard to distinguish, the sound is dense, and fortissimo is stunning. A fractional melodic thought is designed to follow not only every word, but every sigh of the opera characters. The leitmotif system serves as a skeleton for a living, free-growing musical flesh — instead of traditional forms and genres.
Gustav Mahler, of course, did not pass by Wagner’s innovations, and continued his line in the field of instrumentation and a free attitude to musical forms. The Prelude and The Death of Isolde are echoed his Symphony No. 5 not only in sound power and timbral parallels. The main theme of Tristan and Isolde — the complex interweaving of love longing and death craving — develops in its own way in Mahler’s work.