program notes {
symphony and that movements four
through six be played without pause.
In contrast to the quickness of its
composition, the Third Symphony had
to wait nearly six years — until June 9,
1902 — to be premiered in its entirety.
Finally, Richard Strauss invited Mahler
to present the entire symphony under his
baton at a festival of new German music
in Krefeld near Cologne in 1902. Despite
the composer’s gloomy predictions that no
one would understand the “comic” aspects
of a symphony he considered fundamentally happy (he had earlier given it the title
“The Happy Life”), the premiere was the
greatest triumph of his career to date.
Listening to the Music
The musical forces required for this
work are immense: a huge orchestra with
eight horns, enlarged string sections, two
harps and two timpanists as well as other
drums and percussion. Added to this are
an alto soloist for the fourth and fifth
movements, and women’s and children’s
choirs for the fifth. And yet during most
of the work’s 100 minutes, Mahler uses
only a small portion of his forces —
instead presenting chamber-like groups
of instruments, combined with superb
sensitivity for their colors and expressive
qualities. As he wrote to Natalie BauerLechner: “The aspect of instrumentation
in which I consider myself ahead of past
and present composers can be summed
up in a single word: clarity. … Each
instrument must be employed only in the
right place and for its own qualities.”
Mahler called the first movement
“the wildest thing I ever wrote.” Its long
D-minor introduction —“Pan Awakens”
— opens unforgettably with the eight
horns blaring out in unison a four-square
theme Mahler called the “Waking Call.”
Sleeping nature begins slowly to stir with
the rumble of drums, a mysterious swing
of major and minor chords that we’ll
hear later in the fourth movement, and
a snarling, dissonant motive from muted
trumpets. Soon one of Mahler’s signature
funeral marches lumbers into action
— the deadly weight of Winter. A solo
trombone twice presents a fanfare-based
melody. Alternating with this music is
You enjoy a first class
music experience.
an ethereal lullaby for high flutes over
tremolo violins plus a tender theme for
solo violin representing the sleeping Pan.
As woodwind birds call, we hear the
approach of a much more festive march,
and the main part of this stretched-out
sonata-form movement begins now in
F Major. This is Summer’s march, and it
has a strongly popular, even vulgar cast to
it that is a characteristic feature of Mahler’s
music, with a brassy melody and snare
drum borrowed from military bands.
After a “Hollywood” climax with
harp glissandos, the development section
begins with the theme of the trombone
solo played by horns. All of this gradually
builds into a frenzied, loud, dissonant
section Mahler labels “Das Gesindel!”—
“The Mob!” An accelerated march in
distant keys announces the beginning
of a battle between the forces of summer
and winter. Eventually, the Summer
march dominates, building to a finale
that is “wild” indeed.
The second movement, “What the
flowers of the meadow tell me,” provides complete contrast. Mahler loved
the flower-filled meadow outside his
composing cottage, and it inspired this
lovely minuet in A Major. The middle
trio section features faster, slightly more
intense music with whirling sixteenth
notes and fuller, but still transparent
orchestration. “It is the most carefree
piece I have ever written,” Mahler wrote
to Natalie Bauer-Lechner. “It is carefree
as only flowers can be. Everything hovers in the air with grace and lightness,
like flowers bending on their stems and
being caressed by the wind.”
The third-movement scherzo, “What
the animals of the forest tell me,” is
longer and more emotionally complex.
It begins innocently with a perky, birdlike
melody in the woodwinds, taken from
Mahler’s song “Ablösung in Sommer”
(“Relief in Summer”) which mourns the
cuckoo who fell to its death from the tree
and was replaced by the mellifluous
nightingale. The music is a polka with
typical polka slides in the brass, inspired
by Mahler’s Bohemian childhood. A
middle section introduces a solo posthorn
that seems to represent man as the hunter;
Shoul dn’t you
also enjoy a first class
moving experience?
ContaCt
Donna Brown
Long & Foster Real Estate
realtor/reloCation SpeCialiSt
410-804-3400
email: [email protected]
weB: http://donnabrown.lnf.com
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