Programme Notes | Lahav Shani

Programme Notes

Lahav Shani conducts Mahler 6 Sun 11 February 2024 • 14.15 Fri 16 February 2024 • 20.15

PROGRAMME conductor Lahav Shani soprano Chen Reiss Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Six Orchestral Songs • Wiegenlied, op. 41 nr. 1 (1899/1900) • Meinem Kinde, op. 37 nr. 3 (1897) • Ich wollt ein Strausslein binden, op. 68 nr. 2 (1918/1940) • Säus’le liebe Myrthe, op. 68 nr. 3 (1918/1940) • Morgen, op. 27 nr. 4 (1894/1897) • Das Rosenband, op. 36 nr. 1 (1897) intermission Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) Symphony No. 6 in A Minor ‘Tragic’ (1903–04) • Allegro energico, ma non troppo. Heftig, aber markig • Scherzo: Wuchtig • Andante moderato • Finale: Sostenuto - Allegro moderato - Allegro energico Concert ends at around 22.35/16.35 Most recent performances by our orchestra: Strauss Wiegenlied + Meinem Kinde: Nov 1977, soprano Jessye Norman, conductor Edo de Waart (on tour) Strauss Ich wollt + Säus’le liebe Myrthe: Jan 2014, soprano Soile Isoski, conductor Sir Mark Elder Strauss Morgen: Jun 2018, soprano Joyce DiDonato, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin Strauss Das Rosenband: first performance Mahler Symphony No. 6: Sep 2014, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin (on tour) One hour before the start of the concert, Eveline Nikkels will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €5. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden.

Cover: Photo Egor Yakushkin (Unsplash).

Richard Strauss and Pauline de Ahna with their son Franz, at home in Marquartstein (Bavaria), around 1903. Photo coll. Richard-Strauss-Institut

‘Good heavens, I forgot the claxon! Now I have to write another symphony.’ Cartoon (1907) by Fritz Schönpflung after the first performances of Mahler’s Sixth.

Composers and family men Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. Contemporaries, friends, fellow conductors and composers.

Yet polar opposites in terms of temperament: Strauss had both feet planted firmly on the ground; Mahler always with his head in the clouds. They were there to help each other; but they were also competitors. For example, after a successful series of concerts in Amsterdam, Mahler wrote to his wife: ‘I beat Strauss here by a huge distance!’ In this programme, however, they sit side by side in brotherly harmony.

In 1887, when the 23-year-old Richard Strauss met soprano Pauline de Ahna, he recognised her as a great talent. He coached her and invited her to sing in his opera productions. Things did not always go smoothly, given her impetuous character. But when, during a rehearsal, she threw a score at his head in anger, this led, in the soloists’ room shortly thereafter, to them becoming engaged. A long and happy marriage awaited the couple. De Ahna would no longer sing opera once she became a mother; instead she would continue to sing lieder, increasingly with the backing of an orchestra, and thereby inspire Strauss to compose some of the most beautiful lieder of the romantic repertoire.

With Morgen, thanks also to the magical violin

solo that actually plays the theme, they enjoyed universal success. It was a song Strauss gave his wife as a wedding gift. And for the birth of their son he composed Meinem Kinde, a song that together with Wiegenlied (also included in this programme) and Muttertändelei comprised the celebrated Mutterlieder. Evidence of how happy a family man Strauss was is not only to be found in these lieder, but later in a symphonic poem and even an opera. Following Pauline’s final departure from the concert platform in 1906, it was not until 1918 that Strauss would compose five lieder to set to poems by Clemens Brentano, for soprano Elisabeth Schumann.

Two of those lieder also grace this programme.

A hard nut to crack

Brentano was also known for his compilation of folk poems Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which for Mahler had for many years been an inexhaustible well for his own lieder and symphonies. That period was actually over when he began work on his Sixth Symphony in 1903, although the sound world of Revelge, a Wunderhorn lied about a soldier left behind on the battlefield by his marching comrades, still resonates in the first movements. In 1901, following his Wunderhorn years, Mahler turned to Friedrich Rückert, whose Kindertotenlieder he set to music. Mahler was in his early forties at the time, director of the Vienna Court Opera, and would soon meet his great love, Alma Schindler, a young, talented composer, and ‘the most beautiful girl in Vienna’. Within a few months they were

married, and in the following years became parents to two daughters. These were certainly not the conditions for composing such dark lieder.

But it is even more astonishing to listen to his Sixth Symphony, his most pessimistic.

It is certainly not possible to recognise a happy family man in this work. As an explanation to his audience, he described the work as ‘a hard nut to crack. It can only be understood by those familiar with my previous symphonies’. Unfortunately, he offered almost no further explanation. Many years later, Alma would write about their carefree summers in Maiernigg, between the lakes and the mountains. Mahler would spend time in a separate hut composing, or otherwise spending a relaxed time with his daughter.

Alma wrote about his prophetic gifts, as an artist, as a way of explaining the nature of the music, but perhaps also it captured memories of his youth, the poverty around him, and the many early deaths in the family. The work also looks to the past with its choice of traditional four-movement symphonic form, with even a recapitulation in the first movement. Mahler called the symphony his most personal work; he and Alma both burst into tears when he plays it to her for the first time. He portrayed his wife in the lyrical theme of the first movement, and perhaps also in the choice of key for each of the four movements: A-La-Mi-A. Her claim that the scherzo, with its rhythmical irregularity, characterises the playing children, is perhaps doubtful, given that their first daughter was only aged one at the time of the composition. However, there is no doubt as to her description of Mahler himself as the vanquished hero in the final passages.

The path to this fate begins in the first movement with a grim march, which continues into the scherzo. The rhythmic beat of fate, often in a major chord that switches to a minor

key, bookends these movements. The Andante brings some release of tension, with the idiom and key of the fourth Kindertotenlied, Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen!. The cow bells, celeste and high violins from the first movement return and, together with the text from the lied, seem to depict the comfort and loneliness to be found high in the mountains, directed towards heaven. The finale then leads to inevitable catastrophe, culminating in the powerful blows of a big hammer that end with a resigned elegy played by the trombones. The rhythmic beat of fate played by timpani delivers its final blow.

For the future

Mahler was invited by Strauss to premiere the symphony at a festival in Essen in 1906.

Rehearsals were very tense, with much attention paid to the hammer blows. Following the dress rehearsal, the two middle movements were swopped round. There were further performances in Munich and Vienna, where the symphony was given the title ‘Tragic’, but after 1907 Mahler never looked again at the score. In this concert the scherzo is returned to its position as the symphony’s second movement, although its positioning remains a point of contention. Mahler understood that he was writing for a public of the future, and he found Strauss more a man of his own time. ‘My time will come when his is over.’ And indeed, Mahler’s Sixth Symphony would be especially popular amongst the progressive composers of the Second Viennese School. Nor has it lost any of its urgency in our own time. Nevertheless, today we still have a great need for the warm, empathetic musical language of Strauss.

Eelco Beinema

Chen Reiss • soprano Artist in Residence

Photo: Marco Borggreve

Lahav Shani • chief conductor Born: Tel Aviv, Israel Current position: chief conductor Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra; music director Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Before: principal guest conductor Vienna Symphony Orchestra Education: piano at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music Tel Aviv; conducting and piano at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler Berlin; mentor: Daniel Barenboim Breakthrough: 2013, after winning the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg Subsequently: Staatskapelle Berlin, Berlin State Opera, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2016

Born: Herzliya, Israel Education: piano from age five, first singing lessons at fourteen Debut: member of the ensemble of the Bavarian State Opera Solo appearances: Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris Opera: Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Teatro alla Scala, Semperoper Dresden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Dutch National Opera, Wiener Festwochen, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Israeli Opera Roles: Sophie/Rosenkavalier, Gretel/ Hänsel und Gretel, Pamina/Zauberflöte, Zerlina/Don Giovanni, Gilda/Rigoletto, Liu/ Turandot, Ginevra/Ariodante Recitals: with pianists Charles Spencer and Alexander Schmalcz Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2023

Photo: Paul Marc Mitchell

Agenda Valentine’s Recital Wed 14 February 2024 • 20.15 soprano Chen Reiss piano Lahav Shani clarinet Julien Hervé Schumann Fantasiestücke Schumann Myrthen (selection) Spohr Deutsche Lieder (selection) Ben-Haim Three Songs Without Words Mahler Das himmlische Leben Schubert Der Hirt auf dem Felsen Music for Breakfast No. 3 Sun 25 February 2024 • 10.30 with Quirine Scheffers (violin), David Fernández Alonso (horn) and colleagues from the orchestra Saint-Saëns Romance for horn and piano Koechlin Quatre petites pièces for horn, violin and piano Debussy Violin Sonata Dauprat Horn Quintet in F Major Fri 22 March 2024 • 20.15 conductor Valentin Uryupin piano Seong-Jin Cho Mozart Piano Concerto No. 9 ‘Jeunehomme’ Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet (selection)

Musicians Viola Anne Huser Roman Spitzer Galahad Samson Honorary José Moura Nunes Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin Kerstin Bonk Lex Prummel Janine Baller Principal Guest Francis Saunders Conductor Veronika Lénártová Tarmo Peltokoski Rosalinde Kluck León van den Berg First Violin Marieke Blankestijn, Olfje van der Klein concertmeester Cello Quirine Scheffers Hed Yaron Meyerson Emanuele Silvestri Eugene Lifschitz Saskia Otto Joanna Pachucka Arno Bons Mireille van der Wart Daniel Petrovitsch Mario Rio Rachel Browne Gé van Leeuwen Maria Dingjan Marie-José Schrijner Eelco Beinema Carla Schrijner Noëmi Bodden Pepijn Meeuws Petra Visser Yi-Ting Fang Sophia Torrenga Hadewijch Hofland Double Bass Annerien Stuker Matthew Midgley Alexandra van Ying Lai Green Beveren Jonathan Focquaert Robert Franenberg Second Violin Charlotte Potgieter Harke Wiersma Arjen Leendertz Cecilia Ziano Ricardo Neto Frank de Groot Laurens van Vliet Flute Tomoko Hara Juliette Hurel Elina Staphorsius Joséphine Olech Jun Yi Dou Bob Bruyn Flute/piccolo Eefje Habraken Beatriz Da Baião Maija Reinikainen Wim Ruitenbeek Babette van den Berg Oboe Remco de Vries Melanie Broers Karel Schoofs Lana Trimmer Anja van der Maten Chief Conductor Lahav Shani

Clarinet Julien Hervé Bruno Bonansea Clarinet/ Bass Clarinet Romke-Jan Wijmenga Bassoon Pieter Nuytten Lola Descours Marianne Prommel Bassoon/ Contrabassoon Hans Wisse Horn David Fernández Alonso Felipe Santos Freitas Silva Wendy Leliveld Richard Speetjens Laurens Otto Pierre Buizer Trumpet Alex Elia Simon Wierenga Jos Verspagen Trombone Pierre Volders Alexander Verbeek Remko de Jager Bass trombone Rommert Groenhof Tuba Hendrik-Jan Renes Percussion Danny van de Wal Ronald Ent Martijn Boom Adriaan Feyaerts

Oboe/Cor Anglais Harp Charlotte Sprenkels Ron Tijhuis