PROGRAM NOTES
MARIN CONDUCTS TITAN
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Marin Alsop
One of the foremost conductors of our time , Marin Alsop represents a powerful and inspiring voice . The first woman to serve as the head of a major orchestra in the US , South America , Austria , and Britain , she is the first to receive a MacArthur Fellowship . She holds positions as Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra ; first Music Director of the University of Maryland ’ s National Orchestral Institute + Festival ; Conductor of Honour of Brazil ’ s São Paulo Symphony Orchestra ; and Chief Conductor and Curator of Chicago ’ s Ravinia Festival , where she conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ’ s summer residencies . After an outstanding 14-year tenure as its Music Director , she assumes the title of Music Director Laureate and OrchKids Founder of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra . She is also the founder of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship , which promotes and nurtures the careers of fellow female conductors .
Experience the Performance Again A livestream of this program is available for a limited time .
FROM THE PODIUM
by Marin Alsop
This program invites us to consider our relationship to the natural world . Mahler ’ s First Symphony is one of music ’ s great nature pieces , and it even portrays humankind ’ s imprint on that world . A newly released edition allows us to encounter this masterwork not in its final form but in the state Mahler conducted it on two occasions , as a symphonic poem titled Titan . I conducted this version in Vienna and found it really fascinating . It brings back some of his original orchestration choices and it includes “ Blumine ,” a beautiful movement he later eliminated , along with the title Titan . The very first note , played very softly —“ from a great distance ,” Mahler writes in the score — is an A , the “ natural note ” to which the orchestra tunes , and from there we hear many sounds of nature , bird calls , creatures in the woods , celebrations of flowers and meadows . It ’ s a hopeful piece , a piece about optimism and possibility .
Huang Ruo ’ s new work , Tipping Point , also confronts mankind ’ s relationship with the natural world , but from a contemporary perspective . I have worked with him a lot , conducting his music in São Paulo , at the Cabrillo Festival , and most recently leading one of his pieces at the World Economic Forum — and I will soon introduce a work he has composed — for music plus film — with Chinese pipa and American folk-fiddle , a rumination on Chinese-American relations . I find his vocabulary captivating , drawing as it does on Asian and Western traditions . I thought a piece about the environment would be interesting from his perspective . We talked about clocks ticking to mark the passing of time and humankind ’ s approaching the “ tipping point ,” the moment of environmental crisis from which there can be no turning back . His piece offers a musical manifestation of the situation in which humanity finds itself today .
JAN-FEB 2023 / OVERTURE 35