Program
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ in C Minor
for soprano, alto, mixed choir and orchestra (1888–1894)
Allegro maestoso
Andante moderato
In ruhig fließender Bewegung | With quietly flowing movement
Urlicht. Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht | Primal Light. Very solemn, but simple
Im Tempo des Scherzos | In the tempo of the scherzo
The musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir
Guest soloists
Conductor Teodor Currentzis
Details
The concert programme includes the colossal Symphony No. 2 by Gustav Mahler, a composer whose work has been the focus of the orchestra and conductor’s attention throughout the history of musicAeterna. The complex conception, along with its philosophical and religious implications, the large performing cast featuring a choir and two soloists, and the incredible expression combined with unrestrained thematic and genre ‘verbosity’ of Symphony No. 2 contributed to its great success at the premiere in 1895. The Resurrection Symphony became one of the most performed works during Mahler’s lifetime, and with the increased interest in his music in the second half of the 20th century, it took pride of place in the global concert repertoire.
The symphony, often referred to as ‘Resurrection’, begins with a funeral. The composer wrote its first movement back in 1888 as a continuation of the Symphony No. 1: ‘I called the first movement Todtenfeier (Funeral Rites)…It is the hero of my D major symphony that I bear to his grave… Here too the question is asked: What did you live for? Why did you suffer? Is it all only a vast terrifying joke?’ The creation of the full five-part cycle took seven years. The composer explained the harmonious programme more than once in letters and even published it in the annotation to one of the performances of the symphony, but later withdrew it from public circulation. Meanwhile, the author’s instruction remained in the score, demanding that the titanic first movement be separated from all the rest by a five-minute gap of silence.
Mahler thought of the middle movements of the Symphony No. 2 as an interlude between its opening and the grand finale. The second movement is an elegant landler, a memory of the hero’s bright days. The third is a picture of the meaningless seething of life, based on Mahler’s song ‘St. Anthony’s of Padua Sermon to the Fish,’ in which the fish, rather than heeding the saint’s exhortations, continue to devour one another. In the fourth movement, the word appears for the first time. The song ‘Primal Light,’ based on a text from Arnim and Brentano’s collection The Boy’s Magic Horn, serves as a waypoint on the hero’s journey, expressing a desire to escape the hardships of life: ‘Oh little red rose! Our lot is need and sorrow, our lot is longing and sorrow!’
The finale of the symphony lasts over half an hour and consists of two main sections: the orchestral part weaves together all the important themes from the cycle that have been heard previously, and only then do the choir and two solo voices enter. Mahler searched for the text for the closing chorus for an excruciatingly long time, but he heard it at the funeral of his idol, conductor Hans von Bülow. To the eight lines of the 17th-century poet Friedrich Klopstock’s chorale ‘Rise again, yes, you shall rise again, after a short sleep!’ the composer added his own stanzas: ‘Believe, my heart, oh believe: Nothing is lost for you! …’. It is after the beginning of the chorale, the symphony became known as the ‘Resurrection’.