PROGRAM NOTES
MARIN CONDUCTS TITAN
Maximilian Franz
year later . In a newspaper article that ran the day before the concert , Mahler offered a descriptive program in which its five movements were said to depict spring , happy daydreams , a wedding procession , a funeral march to accompany the burial of a poet ’ s illusions , and an advance toward spiritual victory . The premiere was disastrous . “ My friends bashfully avoided me afterward ,” he told his friend Natalie Bauer- Lechner . “ Nobody dared talk to me about the performance and my work , and I went around like a sick person or an outcast .”
He set his score aside for three years . In 1893 — he had by then moved to Hamburg — he subjected the work to severe revisions , particularly in matters of orchestration . “ On the whole ,” he wrote to Richard Strauss , “ everything has become more slender and transparent .” This was the version he conducted under the name Titan in 1893 and 1894 — still labeling it a tone poem , still in five movements . In the printed program he assigned each movement a programmatic title ( as given in today ’ s concert program ), in some cases adding extended prose descriptions about the movement , such as explaining how the fourth movement related to a picture in a children ’ s book that depicted forest creatures accompanying the coffin of a deceased woodsman , or how the fifth suggested “ the sudden eruption of a heart wounded to the quick .” Some have claimed that the title Titan reflected his admiration for a novel of that name by the Romantic author Jean Paul , while others have argued that Mahler was in search of a name that might predispose the audience toward the piece ’ s grander elements . Bauer-Lechner insisted that Mahler did not intend for his symphony to be connected with Jean Paul , much though he admired that writer . “ What he had in mind ,” she wrote , “ was simply a strong , heroic person , living and suffering , struggling with and succumbing to destiny , for which the true higher resolution is not given until the Second [ Symphony ].”
Now the reception was mixed . Wrote Mahler : “ My symphony was received with furious opposition by some and with wholehearted approval by others . The opinions clashed in an amusing way , in the streets and in the salons .” He kept on revising , attaching further programmatic descriptions to the movements and then discarding them . When the piece was finally published as his Symphony No . 1 in 1898 , and in its revised edition of 1906 , he placed only the words “ Like the Sound of Nature ” at the head of the score . He also eliminated the “ Blumine ” movement — so effectively that it remained unpublished for seven decades . Not until 2019 was the score of the Hamburg / Weimar Titan Symphony published , finally allowing today ’ s audiences to hear this piece as its composer envisioned and conducted it at a critical point in its development , a work that diverges from the ultimate First Symphony in matters large and small — a work that , for a change , is truly Mahler ’ s Titan .
Instrumentation Four flutes ( three doubling piccolo ), four oboes ( one doubling English horn ), E-flat clarinet ( doubling bass clarinet ) and three clarinets in B-flat and in A ( one doubling E-flat clarinet ), three bassoons ( one doubling contrabassoon ), seven horns , four trumpets ( two doubling cornets à pistons ), three trombones , contrabass tuba , timpani , percussion ( triangle , cymbals , Turkish cymbals , bass drum , tam-tam ), harp ( optionally doubled ), and strings
JAN-FEB 2023 / OVERTURE 37