NOVA Chamber Music Series

Fry Street Quartet, music directors

Connect With The Earth

Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth)
by Gustav Mahler
orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg

Libby Gardner Concert Hall
05.21.2023 | 4pm
pre-concert discussion at 3:15pm

concert program

*Das Lied von der Erde*

Gustav Mahler
(1860-1911)

Anna Larsson mezzo-soprano | Barry Banks tenor
Thierry Fischer conductor
Mercedes Smith flute/piccolo | Zachary Hammond oboe/English horn
Erin Svoboda-Scott clarinet/bass clarinet | Leon Chodos bassoon
Jessica Danz horn | Keith Carrick, Eric Hopkins percussion
Mitchell Giambalvo piano | Madeline Adkins, Claude Halter violin
Brant Bayless viola | Walter Haman cello | Jens Tenbroek bass

I. Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde
(The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow)
II. Der Einsame im Herbst
(The Lonely in Autumn)
III. Von der Jugend
(Of Youth)
IV. Von der Schönheit
(Of Beauty)
V. Der Trunkene im Frühling
(The Drunk in Spring)
VI. Der Abschied
(The Farewell)

program notes by Jeff Counts

Like sister cities, performing arts organizations often bond across great distances. The gaps can be measured in miles, dollars, even seats, but a relationship forged on common artistic values can sustain colleague companies and reward their shared audiences over time. NOVA Chamber Music Series and Utah Symphony have always had one of these connections. Nothing about their staff sizes, budgets, or production schedules looks similar, but their missions (not the printed ones, but the deep-down ones, the real ones) might as well have come from the same hand. And the cross-pollination between NOVA and Utah Symphony goes beyond just basic founding principles; it happens with the people too.

Until now, every NOVA Music Director has been a member of the Utah Symphony. Only the current leadership of the Fry Street Quartet breaks the trend, and they were drawn to the opportunity because of the reputation of Utah musicianship for which both companies are responsible (to be fair, the FSQ has been in Utah long enough to be considered local themselves). One close relationship that has benefitted NOVA immensely is between Jason Hardink (NOVA Music Director from 2009-2018) and outgoing Utah Symphony Music Director Thierry Fischer. Maestro Fischer saw early on that NOVA was not afraid to challenge the expectations of Salt Lake City concertgoers, and in Jason, he had a partner in the exploration of the fascinating repertoire for more modest orchestral forces. After performances of pieces by Simon Holt, John Adams, Arnold Schoenberg, and Johannes Brahms, this meeting of minds continued during the NOVA tenure of Utah Symphony Concertmaster Madeline Adkins with a concert featuring Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto. Now, as his time as Music Director of Utah Symphony draws to a close, Thierry Fischer bids farewell to the NOVA Chamber Music Series with the chamber orchestra version of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

Completed during the summer of 1908, The Song of the Earth is both song cycle and symphony. It is also arguably neither. Mahler was, at that time, a living master of both forms, one who had already used Lieder and other vocal music to enhance his symphonic efforts on four occasions. He didn’t invent the song/symphony hybrid, certainly, but after his Symphonies 2, 3, 4, and 8, the genre-agnostic freshness of Das Lied von der Erde was essentially inevitable. Also attending the refined hyphenate nature of Das Lied was a bit of superstition. Mahler always feared death and, though he seemed bent on ignoring the health warnings his doctors gave him in 1907, he was not deaf to the curses of the cosmos. He, like so many others working in the shadow of Beethoven, believed that any living composer’s 9th Symphony was destined to be their last. To ward off this hex, Mahler refused to number Das Lied, instead referring to it obliquely as a “Symphony for Tenor, Contralto (or Baritone) and Orchestra”. Yes, he would compose an actual Symphony No. 9 a year later in 1909, and yes, that work would fulfill the delayed prophecy by being his last, but that is a plot for another story. In any case, Mahler would not live to see the premiere of Das Lied von der Erde in 1911.

Technically and emotionally, the demands of the score require singers of the highest rank. Swedish mezzo Anna Larsson comes to NOVA as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of Mahler song and a frequent collaborator with renowned Mahler conductors across the industry. She is also in high demand as an opera artist and regularly relies on her experience to speak publicly on the future of classical music. Lyric tenor Barry Banks appears regularly at the Metropolitan Opera and was featured on the Utah Symphony recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Maestro Fischer. Barry is known for his dramatic fearlessness and stunning vocal agility. It’s hard to imagine a more perfectly matched pair of artists for Das Lied von der Erde, and hearing them today in the increasingly popular reduction by Arnold Schoenberg (incomplete upon his death and finished by Rainer Riehn in 1980), allows us to enjoy the power of Mahler’s epic message of beauty and resignation in the intimate setting of a recital.

The poetic source material for The Song of the Earth came from a book of 8th-century Chinese verse translated into German by Hans Bethge. Mahler was given the volume as a gift in 1907, and it clearly possessed him in a way Asian art had rarely done. The words he chose encompass everything from the abiding beauty of nature to the weariness and pain of impending death, and in Mahler’s expressive hands, the big truth about permanence (Earth has it, Man does not) is pondered in the comfort of deep musical eloquence. Structurally, Das Lied roughly traces the course of a symphony, at least in the way Mahler perceives the form. The first movement (“The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow”) is the thesis, the opening statement of conflict. “The Lonely in Autumn” functions as the slow movement, and the next three movements (“Of Youth”, “Of Beauty”, “The Drunk in Spring”) “comprise a wistful scherzo in three parts”, according to scholar Herbert Glass. At last, we come to “The Farewell”, a galactic utterance equal in length to everything that has come before, and perhaps one of the most effective finales Mahler ever wrote.

artists

Featured

Madeline Adkins

violin, 2018/19 music director

Barry Banks

tenor

Brant Bayless

viola

Keith Carrick

percussion

Jessica Danz

horn

Thierry Fischer

conductor

Claude Halter

violin

Walter Haman

cello

Zachary Hammond

oboe

Eric Hopkins

percussion

Anna Larsson

mezzo-soprano

Mercedes Smith

flute

Erin Svoboda-Scott

clarinet

This concert is made possible through the generous support of

our donors

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