Mahler 9 with Lahav Shani
Fri 23 May 2025 • 20.15 Sun 25 May 2025 • 14.15
PROGRAMME
conductor Lahav Shani
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 9 in D major, Op. (1909-10)
• Andante comodo
• Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers
• Rondo-Burleske. Allegro assai, sehr trotzig
• Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend
Concert ends at around 22.00
Most recent performance by our orchestra: Dec 2014, conductor Jaap van Zweden
One hour before the start of the concert, Alexander Klapwijk will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €7,50. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden
Cover: Photo Hasan Almasi (Unsplash)
Farewell Hendrik-Jan Renes
This is the last concert week of our tubaist Hendrik-Jan Renes. After 38 years with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra he is now retiring.
page 2–3: ‘O Jugendzeit! Entschwundene!
O
Verwehte!’
Photo: Antim Wijnaendts van Resandt
Photo
Liebe!
Page from the manuscript of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony
Mahler in the hall of the Wiener Staatsoper,1907.
Farewell
Mahler’s Ninth Symphony is a work full of riddles. The key to the mystery lies in the year 1907, a disastrous year for Mahler.
The year got off to a bad start immediately. After a period of ten years as director of the Vienna Court Opera, he witnessed the Austrian press turning against him en masse. Even his relationship with colleagues turned sour. There was no other option for Mahler than to tender his resignation. A lucrative contract with the Metropolitan Opera in New York eased the pain. With less onerous responsibilities and a much higher salary, he hoped to have saved up sufficient dollars over the next few years to be able to dedicate himself entirely to composing.
Tragedy
However, this professional disaster paled into significance alongside the family tragedies of that summer. Fate struck him with a hammer blow when his oldest daughter and the apple of his eye, Maria –whom he nicknamed Putzi – died of scarlet fever. She was not yet five years old. Maria died in the family’s summer house in Maiernigg, where Mahler retreated to compose his Sixth, Seventh and Eighth symphonies.
Mahler’s good friend Bruno Walter would later describe how differently Mahler and his wife Alma would process the loss of their young daughter: ‘It has destroyed him. On the outside you see no trace, but those who know him better know that inside he is
completely defeated. She, on the other hand, bears it more easily with tears and philosophising.’
Contrary to what Walter claims to have witnessed, however, the death of Maria also dealt a heavy blow to Alma, whose physical health deteriorated. The doctor who cared for her over the ensuing days by chance diagnosed Mahler with a serious heart defect – a third disaster that would turn his life upside down. He was compelled to avoid any strenuous physical exertion from now on, such as the mountain walks that he loved so much. The fear of an early death was now something that dominated his day-to-day existence. With watch in hand he would repeatedly check his pulse.
Beginner
For Mahler, the year 1907 was a year of farewells: to Vienna, to the Court Opera. To many friends and fans who waved him off at the station at the start of his journey, to his summer house in Maiernigg, to a child to whom he felt so spiritually connected, but also to his vision for his own future.
The letters that he sent in this period to his protégé and confidante Bruno Walter offer an intriguing glimpse into the soul of the composer during the closing years of his life.
Within a year he began work on a new composition, Das Lied von der Erde, a symphony comprising six songs scored for contralto, tenor and orchestra. For the summer months that he spent in Europe, he found another summer house, this time in
Gustav
Photo Moritz Nähr
Toblach. ‘But I can only come to myself and become conscious of myself here in solitude. For ever since that panic terror I felt that time, I have tried to do nothing other than to look away and avert my ears. I shall only tell you that quite simply at a stroke I lost all the clarity and reassurance that I ever achieved; and that I stood face to face with nothing and now, at the end of my life, I must learn to walk and stand as a beginner.’
Mahler’s musical language also changed, becoming more sober, more intimate and more in the style of chamber music.
Industrious
The mood of ‘Der Abschied’, the final and longest movement of Das Lied von der Erde –‘Ich suche Ruhe für mein einsam Herz’ (‘I seek peace for my lonely heart’), from a poem by Chinese poet Wang Wei – would work itself into Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which he began composing in 1909. Yet mentally the composer seemed to have entered into another phase: ‘I have been experiencing an incredible amount for the last year and a half, I can hardly express it in words. I see everything in a totally new light, so much movement. I wouldn’t even be surprised to suddenly find myself in a new body, (like Faust in the final scene). I have a greater appetite for life than ever, and I enjoy more the habit of just existing.’
The composer had found a new path forward, and reached new insights. In the summer he withdrew, without Alma, to Toblach. Several months later he wrote: ‘I have been very industrious and just now putting the finishing touches to the new symphony. The work itself (as far as I know it – because so far I have been writing ‘blind’ and now that I am starting to score the final movement, I no longer remember the first) is
a very positive enrichment to my little family. Something is said here that has been hanging on my lips for a long time.’
‘I shall only tell you that now, at the end of my life, I must learn to walk and stand as a beginner’
Cryptic
Mahler revealed very little about the meaning behind the Ninth Symphony, not even to Walter. ‘Perhaps (taken as a whole) it is closest to the Fourth Symphony’, is a comment perhaps too cryptic to be able to draw any firm conclusions. The Fourth, that sings of a ‘heavenly life’, is similarly in four movements, and both scherzi share the form of a dance of death. However, the tone of the Ninth is very different. A melancholic first movement, a frenzied madness in the Rondo-Burleske, and a Finale of tranquillity and introspection. Perhaps words quoted from his 1905 Kindertotenlieder, appearing towards the end of the symphony, offer a clue: ‘Der Tag ist schön auf jenen Höh’n!’ (‘the day is beautiful at these heights’). Had Mahler written a musical farewell for his daughter Maria, two years after her death?
Mahler’s own life was coming to an end; on 18 May 1911, after returning sick to Vienna from his engagement in America, he drew his last breath. A year later, Bruno Walter conducted the first performance of the Ninth Symphony.
Eelco Beinema
Lahav
Shani • conductor
Born: Tel Aviv, Israel
Current position: chief conductor Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra; music director Israel Philharmonic Orchestra; chief conductor designate Münchner Philharmoniker (from 2026)
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, First Prize Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg
Subsequently: guest appearances Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Gewandhaus Orchester, Münchner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2016
Photo: Marco Borggreve
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Fri 30 May 2025 • 20.00
Sat 31 May 2025 • 20.00
Sun 1 June 2025 • 20.00
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chorus LaurensVocaal
harp Remyvan Kesteren
dance Scapino Ballet Rotterdam
choreography Nanine Linning
digital scenography Claudia Rohmoser
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Kyriakides Ein Schemen
Thu 5 June 2025 • 20.15
Fri 6 June 2025 • 20.15
conductorTarmo Peltokoski
soprano Asmik Grigorian
bass Mika Kares
Shostakovich Symphony No. 14
Sibelius Symphony No. 4
Fri 12 September 2025 • 20.15
conductor Dalia Stasevska
soprano and nyckelharpa Aphrodite
Patoulidou
Meredith Nautilus
Sibelius Scene with Cranes
Berio Folk Songs
Patoulidou Improvisation
Sibelius Luonnotar
Respighi Pini di Roma
Fri 26 September 2025 • 20.15
Sun 28 September 2025 • 14.15
conductor Lahav Shani
soprano Elza van den Heever
alto Gerhild Romberger
tenor Daniel Behle
bass Kostas Smoriginas
chorus Laurens Symfonisch
Bruckner Te Deum
Bruckner Symphony No. 4 ‘Romantic’
Chief Conductor
Lahav Shani
Honorary Conductor
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Principal Guest Conductor
Tarmo Peltokoski
First Violin
Marieke Blankestijn, concertmaster
Tjeerd Top, concertmaster
Quirine Scheffers
HedYaron Meyerson
Saskia Otto
Arno Bons
Rachel Browne
Maria Dingjan
Marie-José Schrijner
Noëmi Bodden
PetraVisser
Sophia Torrenga
Hadewijch Hofland
Annerien Stuker
Alexandra van Beveren
Marie Duquesnoy
Giulio Greci
Second Violin
Charlotte Potgieter
Frank de Groot
Laurens vanVliet
Elina Staphorsius
JunYi Dou
Bob Bruyn
Eefje Habraken
Maija Reinikainen
Babette van den Berg
Melanie Broers
Tobias Staub
Sarah Decamps
Viola
Galahad Samson
José Moura Nunes
Kerstin Bonk
Janine Baller
Francis Saunders
Veronika Lénártová
Rosalinde Kluck
León van den Berg
Olfje van der Klein
Jan Navarro
Cello
Emanuele Silvestri
Joanna Pachucka
Daniel Petrovitsch
Mario Rio
Eelco Beinema
Carla Schrijner
Pepijn Meeuws
Yi-Ting Fang
Killian White
Double Bass
Matthew Midgley
Ying Lai Green
Jonathan Focquaert
Arjen Leendertz
Ricardo Neto
Javier Clemen Martínez
Flute
Juliette Hurel
Joséphine Olech
Manon Gayet
Flute/Piccolo
Beatriz Baião
Oboe
Karel Schoofs
Anja van der Maten
Oboe/Cor Anglais
Ron Tijhuis
Clarinet
Julien Hervé
Bruno Bonansea
Alberto Sánchez García
Clarinet/ Bass Clarinet
Romke-Jan Wijmenga
Bassoon
Pieter Nuytten
Lola Descours
Marianne Prommel
Bassoon/ Contrabassoon
Hans Wisse
Horn
DavidFernándezAlonso
FelipeFreitas
Wendy Leliveld
Richard Speetjens
Laurens Otto
Pierre Buizer
Trumpet
Alex Elia
Adrián Martínez
Simon Wierenga
JosVerspagen
Trombone
PierreVolders
AlexanderVerbeek
Remko de Jager
Bass Trombone
Rommert Groenhof
Tuba
Hendrik-Jan Renes
Percussion
Danny van de Wal
Ronald Ent
Martijn Boom
Anne Huser
Roman Spitzer
Harp
Albane Baron