6 minute read
RESURRECTION MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 2
Friday 22 November 2019 / 7:30PM Saturday 23 November 2019 / 7:30PM Masterworks
Presented in partnership with Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust
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Guest Artist Sponsor: Naomi + John Lacey Virtuoso Programme Chorus Sponsor: Borak Forte Programme Conductor Couturier: Umberto Custom Tailors Ltd.
PROGRAMME
Rune Bergmann, conductor Iwona Sobotka, soprano Edna Prochnik, mezzo soprano
Calgary Philharmonic Chorus
Mahler Symphony No. 2 in C Minor (Resurrection; Auferstehungssymphonie) I. Allegro maestoso II. Andante moderato III. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung IV. Urlicht V. Im Tempo des Scherzo 80'
SYMPHONY NO. 2 IN C MINOR (RESURRECTION)
Gustav Mahler (1860 to 1911)
The striking compound of optimism and neurosis found in Mahler’s music has made him one of the most popular composers of our time. The optimism speaks to the enduring need for a reminder that life can be beautiful; the neurosis reflects the state of western society, to a remarkably accurate degree for a composer who died 108 years ago.
“A symphony should be like the world,” he told fellow composer Jean Sibelius in 1907, “it must contain everything.” Each of Mahler’s major compositions, in its own way, seeks to express a world’s worth of emotion and experience. The same symphony, or even the same movement of a symphony, may contain any or all of the following: heroism and tragedy, nobility and satire, simplicity and sophistication, despair and contentment.
No composition of his achieves his goal of enhancing life with a greater, more unequivocal sense of triumph than his second symphony. The fact that he composed it between the ages of 28 and 34 makes its stunning impact even more remarkable.
During the closing months of 1887 and the beginning of 1888, he worked feverishly on two compositions simultaneously: his first symphony and Totenfeier (Funeral Rites), an orchestral funeral march. He finished them both before the latter year was out. He also made sketches for an orchestral andante, but then put both it and Totenfeier aside.
Three years later, he played Totenfeier on the piano for eminent conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow. Shattered by Bülow’s utter rejection, Mahler fell into a creative funk that lasted two years. By the end of that period, he had decided to use Totenfeier as the opening movement of a new symphony, and to follow its furious drama and grieving with a series of lighter, contrasting
Rune Bergmann biography on page 7 Calgary Philharmonic Chorus biography on page 8
intermezzi. Working with materials not originally intended for this symphony — including his 1888 andante sketches and Urlicht (Primal Light), a song for voice and piano — he completed the second, third and fourth movements during the summer of 1893. Aside from a few sketches, the symphony’s finale continued to elude him.
The dilemma was resolved in dramatic fashion, and in a manner appropriately tied in with the symphony’s early history. Bülow died in February 1894. At his funeral service in March, Mahler heard a choir sing poet Friedrich Klopstock’s Resurrection Ode. He knew instantly he had found the material he had been seeking. He eventually added words of his own to bring the text more into line with his own views on the subject.
He conducted the symphony’s first complete performance in Berlin on 13 December 1895. His sister Justine recalled, “The triumph grew greater with every movement. Such enthusiasm is seen only once in a lifetime! Afterwards, I saw grown men weeping and youths falling on each other’s necks .... It was indescribable.”
Mahler held ambivalent feelings toward the narrative elements in his music, and the second symphony was no exception. He first put forward an explicit programme for it in a letter to critic Max Marschalk in 1896. Several even more elaborate descriptions followed, only to have Mahler eventually disavow them all, as he had clearly created them after the music had been written. In finally abandoning more detailed description, however, Mahler left the words he had chosen, and the music he had written, to speak for themselves.
Programme Notes by Don Anderson 2019
IWONA SOBOTKA
Soprano
Iwona Sobotka achieved international acclaim as the Grand Prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Belgium. Other awards include First Prize at the East and West Artists International Auditions in New York, which led to her debut concert at Carnegie Hall. Sobotka performs with many leading orchestras, including Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Berlin, Vienna Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonie Luxembourg, Rundfunkorchester Berlin, and Mahler Chamber Orchestra. She made her operatic debut at the National Opera in Paris, where she performed the roles of the First Lady (The Magic Flute) and Ygraine (Ariane et BarbeBlue). Other roles she has enjoyed with great success include Tatyana (Eugene Onegin), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Violetta (La Traviata), Pamina (The Magic Flute), Mimi (La Boheme), and Liù (Turandot). Following her graduation from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Sobotka continued her studies with renowned artist and pedagogue Tom Krause at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid.
EDNA PROCHNIK
Mezzo-soprano
This season, Israeli mezzo-soprano Edna Prochnik sings Erda in both Das Rheingold and Siegfried with Staatstheater Kassel, Herodias in Salome with both Israeli Opera and Spoleto Festival in the U.S., Filippyevna in Eugene Onegin with Israeli Opera, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Calgary Philharmonic. Other recent performances include Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder (Tokyo Symphony Orchestra), Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer (Stuttgart), Olga in Die lustige Witwe (Paris), Klytämnestra in Elektra (Braunschweig), Kundry in Parsifal (Stuttgart), Die gute Hexe in Maxwell Daviss’ The Hogboon (Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg), Kurt Weill’s Die Verheissung (MDR Sinfonieorchester), Panisello’s Le malentendu (Wien, Madrid), Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (Basilika Trier, Symphony Orchestra Rishoi le Zion), and Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro (Israel). Among her many roles with Nationaltheater Mannheim are Kundry in Parsifal, Carmen, Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana, Eboli in Don Carlo, Klytämnestra in Elektra, Herodias in Salome, Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera, Erda and Fricka in Das Rheingold, Erste Norn and Waltraute in Götterdammerung, and Erda in Siegfried. She holds an Artist Diploma from the Hochschule für Darstellende Kunst and graduated with honours from Tel Aviv’s Rubin Academy of Music.
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