August 1, 2004
Mahler's Sixth provides challenge for IU Festival Orchestra
By Peter Jacobi, Music Beat
Gustav Mahler once said, "A symphony must contain the world."
His symphonies certainly seem to, and in the Sixth of Mahler, the one we get to hear Thursday evening in performance by the IU Festival Orchestra at the IU Auditorium, that world is not a happy one. The grandly scoped work amounts to 90 minutes of sadness and a composer brooding over fate. It is also a magnificent exploration of sound and a masterful example of an orchestra being put to maximum use, to being asked to produce ensemble integrity of the highest order.
On the podium for this supreme test will be Roberto Abbado, a maestro who has earned kudos not only throughout his native Italy and Europe but as welcome guest with prominent orchestras in this country: Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle among them. In the Festival Orchestra, he'll have a younger assemblage of musicians, gifted though they are: most of them students, with but a sprinkling of faculty associates to season the ranks. Mahler's Sixth will give them all, the orchestra and their visiting leader, an Olympian challenge.
The composer wrote the Sixth during the summers of 1903 and 1904, a period in his life, one of the few, when joy dominated his days. He was in the early stages of his marriage to the talented and colorful Alma Schindler, his muse, so to speak. He had a young daughter whom he adored and welcomed a second while at work on the symphony. His compositions, after years of being rejected, were beginning to gain a foothold. And he had an enviable position as director of the Vienna Opera.
So, he might have composed music to reflect his disposition of the moment. But composers don't always write music that echoes experiential reality. And besides, Mahler was, from all accounts, rarely an optimist. He was also superstitious, as was Alma, who expressed the view that, in writing such a dark score, Gustav was tempting fate. Well, I'm not getting into that debate, but he might have concluded so because, sure enough, in the period that followed completion of the Sixth Symphony, three tragedies struck: His firstborn daughter died from the combined effects of diphtheria and scarlet fever; he was forced to resign from his position at the Vienna Opera because of intrigues and troubles at that institution, and he discovered that he had a serious heart problem.
Though Mahler removed the label, he initially referred to the symphony as the Tragic, and commentators since still tend to use the title because of the music's mood setting. In the final movement, a 30-minute exposition of grand design, hammer strikes deliver what are meant to be those of fate. Alma claimed Mahler described "himself and his downfall or, as he later said, that of his hero, 'the hero who undergoes three strokes of destiny, the third of which fells him like a tree.'" She likened the symphony to an autobiography written ahead of events and insisted, "None of his works came as directly from his innermost heart as this one."
After Gustav had finished the score and played it through for Alma, she recalls, "We both wept … The music and what it foretold touched us so deeply. The Sixth is the most completely personal of his works, and a prophetic one also." She tells us that after the dress rehearsal for the first performance in Essen, and that was in May of 1906, her husband, who chose to lead the premiere himself, walked "up and down in the artists' room, sobbing, wringing his hands, unable to control himself." As for the performance itself, it reportedly was not well conducted even though Mahler was a supremely accomplished conductor. Alma said he feared he had unleashed demons.
What remains for us is a powerful score, Mahler's Pathetique, if we were to liken it to the life and times of Tchaikovsky. Its effect, when played well, can be tremendous. The music can shake you; it can leave you drained. And yet, because of the composer's brilliance as an orchestrator and because of his vivid imagination, his A Minor Sixth Symphony will also exhilarate you. Be prepared for stimulation and for shivers to ripple up and down your emotional spine. Potentially, that can happen to you come Thursday. Downbeat: 8 p.m.
Carlos Kleiber
Word came this past week that Carlos Kleiber died in Slovenia following a lengthy illness. He was 74.
He was also one of the era's most interesting and rewarding conductors, a perfectionist who could drive his players crazy with demands but one very highly regarded by those who played for him. His striving for elusive faultlessness and his diminishing health led him to a reclusive twilight of life. He virtually disappeared from public sight. But at the height of his career, he dazzled audiences with the originality of his vision and the faithfulness to composer intent he lavished on masterpieces of the operatic and symphonic repertoire.
The Kleiber name was part of my music education as listener, but my early attention focused on Erich Kleiber, the now legendary conductor who fathered the child christened Karl, the boy whose name was changed to Carlos when the family moved to Argentina as non-Jewish emigrants from a Nazi-led Germany that father Erich couldn't abide. Erich Kleiber's recordings, including the historic Rosenkavalier, remain in favored spots among my collection.
The son did not leave an imprint on me until 1977 and 1978, more than 20 years into his career when, first, I came in possession of his recording of La Traviata, and then his appearance as guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony. The Traviata persists as my favorite from among numerous recordings because of its unified and absolutely arresting interpretation. And, as I recall, he certainly whipped the Chicagoans into impressively persuasive performances.
In the years since, I've latched on to other recordings of Kleiber, from Wagner to Beethoven. And I treasure memories of his telecast New Year's concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic. He always illuminated his chosen repertoire and imbued totally familiar pieces, whether a Mozart symphony or a Strauss waltz, with freshness. I came to admire his work greatly.
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08/02/2004
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