SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT. April 29 and 30, Allegro energico, ma non troppo Scherzo Andante moderato Finale

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1 SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT April 29 and 30, 2016 GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony No. 6 in A minor: Tragic Allegro energico, ma non troppo Scherzo Andante moderato Finale

2 Symphony No. 6 in A minor: Tragic GUSTAV MAHLER Born July 7, 1860, Kalischt, Bohemia Died May 18, 1911, Vienna In the summer of 1903 Mahler took his wife and 18-month-old daughter to his summer home at Maiernigg on the Wörthersee in central Austria and set to work on a new symphony, which would be his Sixth. Here, in a cottage that looked out over the sunny lake, he sketched the first two movements of what would be a very dark symphony, then returned the following summer (with a new infant daughter) to sketch the final two. The orchestration was complete by the spring of 1905, and Mahler led the premiere of the Sixth Symphony at a festival of new music in Essen on May 27, Though the symphony was published immediately, Mahler continued to re-think and revise it over the remaining five years of his life. The Sixth is unique among Mahler s ten symphonies. It is the only one that ends in unrelieved defeat, and its nickname Tragic points to the music-drama being played out over its 80-minute span. This drama is not pictorial. The Sixth Symphony does not offer the detailed scene-painting of Richard Strauss tone poems but instead tells the generalized tragedy of one central figure, who struggles and triumphs momentarily but who is eventually annihilated by fate. The music had an overpowering impact on its creator. Mahler s widow Alma later recalled the day he first brought the score to her and played it through on the piano: Not one of his works came as directly from his inmost heart as this. We both wept that day. She further recounted the circumstances of the premiere in 1906: None of his works moved him so deeply at its first hearing as this. We came to the last rehearsals, the dress-rehearsal to the last movement with its three blows of fate. When it was over, Mahler walked up and down in the artists room, sobbing, wringing his hands, unable to control himself. For all its devastating impact, the Sixth is Mahler s most classical symphony. It is in four movements, and they are all in traditional forms: outer movements in sonata form frame a scherzo and lyric slow movement. But Mahler being Mahler these classical structures are here re-thought and amplified in ingenious ways. Both outer movements are built on march rhythms whose steady tread propels Mahler s hero toward his fate as implacably as the events of a Greek tragedy or a novel by Hardy or Dreiser. Yet within these movements, grim as they may be, come interludes of luminous calm, moments when we seem to step back from the unfolding

3 tragedy and experience Mahler s sense of the beauty of the world where it is taking place. And all this is energized by Mahler s customary brilliant handling of the orchestra, which in this case is huge: he calls for quadruple woodwind, eight horns, six trumpets and a massive percussion battery that includes the mysterious hammerstroke. These many forces make for a potent mixture, and this dark music found its audience slowly: the Sixth Symphony was not performed in the United States until 1947 (and not in England until 1956, half a century after its premiere), yet today many scholars and enthusiasts consider it Mahler s finest symphony. March rhythms propel the opening of the Allegro energico, which Mahler gives a strange marking: Heftig, aber markig. Heftig means vehement, but markig is more elusive, meaning literally pithy or marrowy perhaps the vernacular gritty is closest to Mahler s meaning. The movement drives forward relentlessly (along the way Mahler marks the oboe part grell glaring, shrill ) and then reaches a moment of poise before Mahler sounds his fate motif. Two timpanists pound out this clipped figure while above them trumpets and oboes play an A Major triad that suddenly resolves into A minor. All by themselves, these four measures encapsulate the dramatic direction of the Sixth Symphony: fate sounding as shining A Major sinks into dark A minor. Relief arrives immediately in the violins soaring second subject, which Mahler marks Schwungvoll ( energetic ). The composer told his wife that he had tried to capture her in this theme, and certainly its shining spirit draws us away from the dark furies of the beginning and the fate motif. The first of the pastoral interludes arrives to the sound of distant cowbells; Mahler noted that the cowbells are the last earthly sounds heard from the valley far below by the departing spirit on the mountain top. Plunging back into the struggle, the furious development makes its way on this sudden juxtaposition of horror and repose before the soaring Alma theme brings the movement to a surprisingly optimistic conclusion. That mood is short-lived. The scherzo returns to A minor, and its pounding off-the-beat rhythms recall the implacable pulse of the symphony s opening. There is something grotesque about this music. Mahler marks it Wuchtig ( weighty ), and its asymmetrical 3/8 meter feels awkward, intentionally clumsy. The trio section brings another sharp change of mood. Mahler marks this Altväterisch ( old-fashioned ), and the oboe sings innocently at first, but some of the unsettling rhythms of the scherzo s opening intrude here; Mahler leaps between 4/8 and 3/8 by the measure, and the pulse never settles comfortably. The opening material returns, but now it has grown darker, and soon the music is full of spooky swirls and dark, slithering sounds. At the

4 end, the orchestra gradually falls away until only a skeleton of the music is left, and the movement lapses into silence on the timpani s three lonely taps. Everything changes with the Andante, the one movement in the symphony not in A minor: Mahler moves to the remote key of E-flat Major for his slow movement. Here the orchestra sings, its long phrases breathing calm after the smoky furies of the first two movements, and Mahler mutes the strings, making their sound even gentler. More varied material follows a rocking woodwind figure and an extended melody introduced by the English horn as do the pastoral interludes of the opening movement, complete with ringing cowbells. The music rises to several climaxes, but the principal impression here is of soaring, radiant beauty, and the Andante one of Mahler s greatest slow movements falls away to a peaceful ending. Longest by far of the four movements, the Finale brings the tragic conclusion to the journey of Mahler s hero. Its slow introduction opens with a sort of cosmic spasm, and from out of these depths the violins soar high, then collapse back into the fate motif from the first movement. A dark chorale for winds sets the tone, and inexorably the music eases ahead to the Allegro moderato, which rides along the same march rhythms that drove the first movement. This is a huge movement dramatic, almost ferocious in its energy yet it also brings a return of those moments of detachment and innocence that occurred in the first. This movement is structured around three climaxes, each culminating in a mighty hammerstroke that deals the hero a withering blow. Mahler did not specify the instrument he had in mind for these hammerstrokes, saying only that they should be dull-sounding and non-metallic, like an ax-stroke. The last of these climaxes fells the hero. The music makes an effort to resist, with the violins soaring upward as they did at the movement s very beginning, but this falls back into the fate motif. A dead march draws the drama to its numbed close; there is one final eruption of the fate motif, and the Sixth Symphony shudders into silence. As noted earlier, Mahler continued to rethink this symphony, even after its publication, and this has made for a number of critical problems (and he may well have made further changes, had he lived beyond the age of 50). Principal among these problems is the sequence of the two inner movements. At the premiere, they were in the order heard at these performances, but Mahler reversed their sequence when he published the symphony, placing the Andante second. He continued to have doubts about this sequence, and the 1963 critical edition of the

5 International Gustav Mahler Society (used at these performances) returns to his original order, in which the Andante comes just before the finale. The nickname Tragic is also open to question. That title did not appear at the time of the premiere, but Mahler added it to the published version, then apparently had doubts and wanted it removed. If ever there were a tragic symphony, however, this is it, and that nickname has become an inescapable part of how we think of this music. Finally, debate swirls around the hammerstrokes. After the first performance, the superstitious Mahler eliminated the third hammerstroke, feeling himself overpowered by it emotionally, but today some conductors restore it. The debate also continues about how that dull-sounding hammerstroke should be produced, and percussionists have experimented, dropping anvils onto padded platforms, striking a wooden frame with a club, and so on. -Program note by Eric Bromberger WHY THIS PROGAM? by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist The Mahler Sixth might be the closest of all Mahler symphonies to me! Jahja Ling continued, The man lost so much his job, his daughter, and he commemorated his losses with two great hammer strokes in the music. I can relate to that. In Cleveland, I was scheduled to conduct it, and at the time my first wife was terribly ill with Stage 4 lung cancer. She passed away several months later, but that was the most memorable concert I ever led in Cleveland. Everyone in the orchestra and the audience felt that, especially when she made it to Severance Hall for the Saturday evening performance. The orchestra played with abandon, with their hearts out. We had been married for 22 years, and at that time our two sons were young and in high school. After pausing, Jahja Ling picked up the thread again and said that he wanted to bring that symphony back now because it has so much history for him, and the music echoes so much of it. Mahler spoke to me in it. The first movement 'Alma theme' is so beautiful. It moved me so much then, reflecting my own feelings about my wife. It will now express my same love for the people of San Diego. ********** Mahler's great sometimes incredible Tragic Symphony, was most recently played here under the direction of Jahja Ling during the season. The orchestra recorded the

6 work at that time for a CD, released for sale in Walter Hendl guest conducted the orchestra when it played this work for its first performance here during the season. In 1999 it was given once more, that time under the direction of Jung-Ho Pak.