MAHLER symphonies Live

The CompLeTe

LORIN MAAZELNEw YoRk PhILhaRmONIc

symphony6

MAHLER SymPhONy NO. 6 in a minor (1903–05, rev. 1906) 89:29

1 allegro energico, ma non troppo 25:112 andante 18:033 Scherzo: Weighty 13:024 Finale. allegro moderato — allegro energico 33:10

REcoRdEdLivEJune 22–25, 2005, avery Fisher hall at Lincoln center for the Performing arts

LoRiNMAAZEL conductor

New York PhilharmoNic aNd loriN maazel: The comPleTe mahler SYmPhoNieS, live is released in celebration of mr. maazel’s seven-year tenure as music Director of the New york Philharmonic, 2002–2009.

Visit nyphil.org/maazelmahler for bonus content including a score with mahler’s own notes, video interviews with Lorin maazel, and audio samples from the complete series.

cover photo: Chris Leeunless otherwise noted, additional imagery:new york phiLharmoniC arChives

vinCe Ford Executive ProducerLarry roCk Producer, Recording

and mastering Engineer

BoRNJuly 7, 1860, in Kalischt (Kaliste), Bohemia, near the town of humpolec

diEdmay 18, 1911, in Vienna, austria

woRkcoMposEdthe summers of 1903–04, with orchestration completed may 1, 1905; revised 1906, with alterations to orchestration continuing for several years thereafter

woRLdpREMiEREmay 27, 1906, in Essen, the composer conducting (this followed a “reading rehearsal” by the Vienna Philharmonic in march 1906); the revised edition was introduced in Leipzig later that year

NEwYoRkpHiLHARMoNicpREMiEREDecember 11, 1947, Dimitri mitropoulos, conductor

Throughout his career Gustav Mahler balanced the competing demands

of his vocations as a composer and conductor. Responsibilities on the podium

and in the administrative office completely occupied him during the concert

season, forcing him to relegate his composing to the summer months,

NotEs ON thE PROgRam: MAHLER SymPhONy NO. 6 3

which he spent as a near-hermit in the Austrian countryside. When he came to write his Sixth Symphony, during the summers of 1903 and 1904, he was persevering as director of the Vienna Court Opera, a position he would hold with mounting frustration until 1907. It was a stressful job, and Mahler’s anxiety at work led to frequent medical problems.

Fortunately, he could look forward to com-posing. His summer getaway was then at Maiernigg, a bump on the map on the south shore of the Wörthersee (known sometimes as Lake Worth to English speakers, to the extent that English speakers know it at all), a bucolic spot in the region of Carinthia in southern Austria. In 1901 he had moved into a villa he had built on the lake, and met Alma Schindler the following November, at a dinner party. She was just then conclud-ing a fling with her composition teacher, Alexander von Zemlinsky. Gustav and Alma were smitten with one another and they married a few months later, on March 9, 1902; their first baby, Maria, was born on

NotEs ON thE PROgRam 4

ListENfoR…alma mahler left an account of the Sixth Symphony as it was being created (published, in English translation, as gustav mahler: memories and Letters):

the summer [of 1904] was beautiful, serene, and happy. Before the holidays came to an end he played me the completed Sixth Symphony. … Once more we walked arm in arm up to his [composing] house in the woods, where nothing could disturb us. these occasions were always very solemn ones.

after he had drafted the first movement he came down from the woods to tell me he had tried to express me in a theme. “Whether I’ve succeeded, I don’t know; but you’ll have to put up with it.”

this is the great soaring theme of the first movement of the Sixth Symphony. In the third move-ment he represented the arrhythmic games of the two little children, tottering in zigzags over the sand. Ominously, the childish voices became more and more tragic, and at the end died out in a whimper. In the last movement he described himself and his downfall or, as he later said, that of his hero: “It is the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled.” those were his words.

Not one of his works came so directly from his inmost heart as this. We both wept that day. the music and what it foretold touched us deeply.

the theme she signaled as intended to be her musical portrait — sometimes referred to asthe“Alma”theme—isthesecondsubjectofthefirstmovement, marked Schwungvoll (“Stirring” and introduced by flutes and violins:

a bit of detective work by the mahler scholar (and former director of La Scala) Quirino Principe revealed that this tune echoes almost note for note an aria in the opera Der trompeter von Säckingen, a work now long forgotten. however, mahler almost surely knew it, as that opera had been com-posed by Emil Kaiser, his immediate predecessor as conductor at the theater in Olmütz (Olomouc), moravia, not long before mahler took over that position in 1883. alma may not have been aware of the connection, or of the fact that the words of that aria read: “god keep you, it would have been too lovely; god keep you, it was not meant to be.”

November 2. A second daughter would arrive during the summer of 1904. Theirs would be a complicated and often unhappy marriage, though they stayed together until Mahler’s death, in 1911. (After that, Alma would marry and divorce the architect Walter Gropius, marry and survive the novelist Franz Werfel, and enjoy romantic adventures with several other overachievers in the arts.) As newlyweds the Mahlers already had problems, but these two titanic personalities persevered; she provided some sort of stability that he found useful, while he satisfied her need to be allied with a man of genius.

At Maiernigg Mahler had constructed a small, sparsely furnished composing hut on the hill behind his villa, and every morning he would meander up along a forest path to work in splendid seclusion. The seclusion was mandated: a servant-girl, for example, would leave the villa moments after him on a more direct trail so she could deposit his breakfast at the hut and make her get-away before he arrived. He typically spent some five hours every morning composing there, and the afternoons were given over to hiking, swimming, sunbathing, and other outdoor pursuits.

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This was the idyllic world where Mahler’s Sixth Symphony came into being, and we may hear a certain measure of loveliness in the score. But that is not the overriding sentiment of this work. On the contrary, this is Mahler’s tragic symphony — quite

literally, since he appended the subtitle Tragic to the work at its premiere. (He would later withdraw the subtitle, but it reemerged on the printed program the final time he conducted this symphony, lending authority and credibility to its continued widespread use.)

stRuctuRALQuEstioNsmodern conductors must exercise their own judgment in deciding the order in which the middle movements of mahler’s Sixth Symphony will be played, since the composer waffled a good deal on this question.

mahler’s original autograph score, which resides in the collection of the gesellschaft der musikfreunde in Vienna, shows that his initial conception was to place the Scherzo before the andante, and that is the order that was carried through to the first printing of the piece, which was effected before this symphony was premiered. But while rehears-ing for the premiere mahler changed his mind, so that at its first performance the andante preceded the Scherzo. mahler seemed

Tragedy surfaces often in Mahler’s sympho-nies, but the composer nearly always uses it as a springboard to triumphant victory (as in his First, Second, Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth Symphonies) or to ecstatic transcen-dence (as in his Third, Fourth, and Ninth). In the resolutely minor-key Sixth, tragedy persists as the dominant expression to the bitter end. And it is the bitterest of ends: the musical depiction of utter catastrophe, of humanity rendered powerless and insig-nificant, overwhelmed by forces that seem born of a dimension apart.

Many of Mahler’s symphonies might be described as cosmic, but in the Sixth we encounter a cosmos that holds out no hope for mankind. The famous hammer blows near this symphony’s conclusion — originally three but reduced in revisions to only two — are among the most shocking and despondent sounds in the entire orchestral repertoire. The composer initially described each as a

“short, powerful but dull-sounding stroke of a non-metallic character,” and later added

“like the stroke of an axe.”

—JAMEsM.kELLERPROgRam aNNOtatOR

content with that; he used the revised order when he conducted the work on two ensuing occasions, and he altered the second edition of the score to reflect his change of mind.

Numerous accounts (which, unfortunately, are not without problems) suggest that mahler later came to believe that his initial idea was better after all, so that when the International gustav mahler Society arrived at the Sixth Symphony in its edition of mahler’s complete works, the editor chose to revert to the original structure, with the Scherzo second and the andante third.

Persuasive musical arguments can be made for either order. In this performance the andante precedes the Scherzo.

NotEs ON thE PROgRam 6

iNstRuMENtAtioNfour flutes (one dou-bling piccolo) plus another piccolo, four oboes (one doubling English horn) plus another English horn, three clarinets plus E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, four bas-soons and contrabassoon, eight horns, six trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, two snare drums, cymbals, triangle, tamtam, orchestra bells, cowbells (played both onstage and off), low chimes (offstage), rute (birch brush), hammer, xylophone, two harps, celesta, and strings.

fRoMcoNdEMNAtioNtoAccLAMAtioNDuring his lifetime gustav mahler faced rejection as a composer. a successful conductor, he became the New york Philharmonic’s music director in 1909; he did not use this podium as a “bully pulpit,” only occasionally leading his own works. Following his death, in 1911, his works fell completely out of favor in New york, as in the rest of the world.

It would fall to mahler’s acolytes to promote his compositions. as early as may 1920 Willem mengelberg (the Philharmonic’s director from 1922 to 1930) conducted mahler’s nine symphonies in a single festival, in amsterdam. In the next two decades the Philharmonic music directors artur Rodzinski (whose tenure was 1943–47), Bruno Walter (1947–49), and Dimitri mitropoulos (1949–58) would become advocates of mahler’s music despite the opposition of such of the musical press which described his works as

“weak, banal, and repetitious.”By 1950 concert halls around the

world resounded with mahler, including in New york, where a 1959 Philharmonic festival honored the centennial of his birth, culminating in a triumphant Leonard

a CariCaTUre oF mahLer published on the occasion of the Vienna premiere of his First Symphony

Bernstein–led performance of the Symphony No. 2. Bernstein would assume the title of the Orchestra’s music Director (1958–69), and would continue to champion his prede-cessor’s oeuvre. his successors — Pierre Boulez (1971–77), Zubin mehta (1978–91), Kurt masur (1991–2002), and Lorin maazel (2002–09) — have joined countless other orchestras and conductors in sealing mahler’s ultimate victory.

—tHEEditoRs

chris Lee

LoRiNMAAZELmusic Director

XianZhangassistant conductor

LeonardBernsteinLaureate conductor, 1943–1990

kurtMasurmusic Director Emeritus

vioLiNsglenn Dicterowconcertmasterthe charles E. culpeper chair

Sheryl StaplesPrincipal associateconcertmasterthe Elizabeth g. Beinecke chair

michelle Kimassistant concertmasterthe William Petschek Family chair

Enrico Di ceccocarol Webbyoko takebe

Emanuel BoderKenneth gordonhae-young hamLisa gihae KimNewton mansfieldKerry mcDermottanna Rabinovacharles RexFiona SimonSharon yamada

Elizabeth Zeltseryulia Ziskel

marc ginsbergPrincipal

Lisa Kim*In memory of Laura mitchell

Soohyun KwonDuoming Ba

matitiahu Braunmarilyn Dubowmartin EshelmanJudith ginsbergmyung-hi Kimhanna LachertKuan-cheng LuSarah O’BoyleDaniel Reedmark SchmoocklerVladimir tsypin

vioLAscynthia PhelpsPrincipalthe mr. and mrs. Frederick P. Rose chair

Rebecca young*Irene Breslaw**the Norma and Lloyd chazen chair

Dorian Rence

Katherine greeneDawn hannayVivek KamathPeter KenoteBarry LehrKenneth mirkinJudith NelsonRobert Rinehart

cELLoscarter BreyPrincipalthe Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels chair

hai-ye Ni*Qiang tuthe Shirley and Jon BrodskyFoundation chair

Evangeline Benedetti

Eric Bartlett+Nancy DonarumaElizabeth DysonValentin hirsumaria KitsopoulosEileen moonBrinton Smith

BAssEsEugene LevinsonPrincipalthe Redfield D. Beckwith chair

Jon Deak*Orin O’Brien

William BlossomRandall ButlerDavid J. grossmanLew NortonSatoshi Okamotomichele Saxon

fLutEsRobert LangevinPrincipalthe Lila acheson Wallace chair

Sandra church*Renée Siebertmindy Kaufman

piccoLomindy Kaufman

oBoEsJoseph Robinson

Principalthe alice tully chair

Sherry Sylar*Robert Botti

ENGLisHHoRNthomas Stacy

cLARiNEtsStanley DruckerPrincipalthe Edna and W. Van alan clark chair

mark Nuccio*Pascual martinezForteza

Stephen Freeman

E-fLAtcLARiNEtmark Nuccio

BAsscLARiNEtStephen Freeman

BAssooNsJudith Leclair

Principalthe Pels Family chairKim Laskowski*Leonard hindellarlen Fast

coNtRABAssooNarlen Fast

HoRNsPhilip myersPrincipalthe Ruth F. and alan J. Broder chair

Jerome ashby*L. William Kuyper**R. allen Spanjer

Erik Ralskehoward Wall

tRuMpEtsPhilip SmithPrincipalthe Paula Levin chair

thomas V. Smithacting associate Principal

Vincent Penzarella

tRoMBoNEsJoseph alessi

Principalthe gurnee F. and marjorie L. hart chair

James markey*David Finlayson

BAsstRoMBoNEDonald harwood

tuBAalan BaerPrincipal

tiMpANiJoseph Pereira**acting Principalthe carlos moseley chair*

pERcussioNchristopher S. LambPrincipalthe constance R. hoguet Friends of the Philharmonic chair

Daniel Druckman*Joseph Pereira

HARpNancy allenPrincipal

kEYBoARdIn memory of Paul Jacobs

HARpsicHoRdLionel Party

piANothe Karen and Richard S. LeFrak chair

harriet WingreenJonathan Feldman

oRGANKent tritle

LiBRARiANsLawrence tarlowPrincipal

Sandra Pearson**thad marciniak

oRcHEstRApERsoNNELMANAGERcarl R. Schiebler

stAGEREpREsENtAtivELouis J. Patalano

AudiodiREctoRLawrence Rock

* associate Principal ** assistant Principal + On Leave ++ Replacement/Extra

the New york Philharmonic uses the revolving seating method for section string players who are listed alphabetically in the roster

NEwYoRkpHiLHARMoNic 2004–2005 SEaSON 8

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ndrew

garn

LoRiNMAAZEL, who has led more than 150 orchestras in more than 5,000 opera and concert performances, became Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2002. His appointment came 60 years after his debut with the Orchestra at Lewisohn Stadium, then the Orchestra’s summer venue. As Music Director he has conducted nine World Premiere–New York Philharmonic Commissions, including the Pulitzer Prize– and Grammy Award–winning On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams; Stephen Hartke’s Symphony No. 3; Melinda Wagner’s Trombone Concerto; and Steven Stucky’s Rhapsodies for Orchestra. He has led cycles of works by Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky; and he conducted the Orchestra’s inaugural performances in the DG Concerts series — a groundbreaking initiative to offer downloadable New York Philharmonic concerts exclusively on iTunes.

Mr. Maazel has taken the Orchestra on numerous international tours, including the historic visit to Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in February 2008 — the first performance there by an American orchestra. Other recent tours have included Europe 2008 in August–September; Asia 2008 — to Taipei, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing in February; the May 2007 Tour of Europe; the November 2006 visit to Japan and Korea; the Philharmonic Tour

of Italy in June 2006, sponsored by Generali; the two-part 75th Anniversary European Tour to thirteen cities in five countries in the fall of 2005; and residencies in Cagliari, Sardinia, and at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado.

In addition to the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Maazel is music director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain. A frequent conductor on the world’s operatic stages, he returned to The Metropolitan Opera in January 2008 for the first time in 45 years to conduct Wagner’s Die Walküre.

Prior to his tenure as New York Philharmonic Music Director, Mr. Maazel led more than 100 performances of the Orchestra as a guest conductor. He served as music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1993–2002), and has held positions as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1988–96); general manager and chief conductor of the Vienna Staatsoper (1982–84); music director of The Cleveland Orchestra (1972–82); and artistic director and chief conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (1965–71). He is an honorary member of the Israel and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, and a Commander of the Legion of Honor of France.

A second-generation American, born in Paris, Mr. Maazel was raised and educated in the United States. He took his first violin

lesson at age five, and first conducting lesson at seven. Between ages 9 and 15 he conducted most of the major American orchestras. In 1953 he made his European conducting debut in Catania, Italy.

Mr. Maazel is also an accomplished composer. His opera, 1984, received its world premiere on May 3, 2005, at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It was revived in the 2007–08 season at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and has been released on DVD by Decca.

The NEwYoRkpHiLHARMoNic, founded in 1842 by a group of local musicians led by American-born Ureli Corelli Hill, is by far the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, and one of the oldest in the world. It currently plays some 180 concerts a year, and on December 18, 2004, gave its 14,000th concert — a milestone unmatched by any other symphony orchestra in the world.

Lorin Maazel began his tenure as Music Director in September 2002, the latest in a distinguished line of 20th-century musical giants that has included Kurt Masur (Music Director from 1991 to the summer of 2002; named Music Director Emeritus in 2002); Zubin Mehta (1978–91); Pierre Boulez (1971–77); and Leonard Bernstein, who was ap-pointed Music Director in 1958 and given the lifetime title of Laureate Conductor in 1969. In September 2009 Alan Gilbert will become the Orchestra’s next Music Director.

Since its inception the Orchestra has championed the new music of its time, commissioning or premiering many impor-tant works such as Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World; Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3; Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F; and Copland’s Connotations. The Philharmonic has also given the U.S. premieres of works such as Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9 and Brahms’s Symphony No. 4. This pioneering tradition has continued to the present day, with works

of major contemporary composers regularly scheduled each season, including John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize– and Grammy Award winning On the Transmigration of Souls; Stephen Hartke’s Symphony No. 3; Augusta Read Thomas’s Gathering Paradise, Emily Dickinson Settings for Soprano and Orchestra; and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto.

The roster of composers and conductors who have led the Philharmonic includes such historic figures as Theodore Thomas, Antonín Dvorák, Gustav Mahler (Music Director, 1909–11), Otto Klemperer, Richard Strauss, Willem Mengelberg (Music Director, 1922–30), Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini (Music Director, 1928–36), Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Bruno Walter (Music Advisor, 1947–49), Dimitri Mitropoulos (Music Director, 1949–58), Klaus Tennstedt, George Szell (Music Advisor, 1969–70), and Erich Leinsdorf.

Long a leader in American musical life, the Philharmonic has over the last century become renowned around the globe, appear-ing in 425 cities in 59 countries on five conti-nents. In February 2008 the Orchestra, led by Music Director Lorin Maazel, gave a historic performance in Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — the first visit there by an American orchestra, and an event watched around the world and for which the Philharmonic received the 2008 Common

Ground Award for Cultural Diplomacy. Other historic tours have included the 1930 Tour to Europe, with Toscanini; the first Tour to the USSR, in 1959; the 1998 Asia Tour, the first performances in mainland China; and the 75th Anniversary European Tour, in 2005, with Lorin Maazel.

A longtime media pioneer, the Philharmonic began radio broadcasts in 1922 and is currently represented by The New York Philharmonic This Week — syndicated nationally 52 weeks per year, and available on nyphil.org and Sirius XM Radio. On television, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Philharmonic inspired a generation through Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on CBS. Its television presence has continued with annual appear-ances on Live From Lincoln Center on PBS, and in 2003 it made history as the first Orchestra ever to perform live on the Grammy Awards, one of the most-watched television events worldwide. The Philharmonic became the first major American orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, recorded live, and released by DG Concerts exclusively on iTunes. Since 1917 the Philharmonic has made nearly 2,000 recordings, with more than 500 cur-rently available. On June 4, 2007, the New York Philharmonic proudly announced a new partnership with Credit Suisse, its first-ever and exclusive Global Sponsor.

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PERFORmED, PRODucED, aND DIStRIButED By thE NEW yORK PhILhaRmONIc© 2009 NEW yORK PhILhaRmONIc

NyP 200906