Eliahu Inbal • Mahler 6

LAN SHUI Music Director

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ELIAHU INBAL • MAHLER 6 6 April 2018 Esplanade Concert Hall Performing Home of the SSO

Eliahu Inbal, conductor

6 Apr 2018, Fri

ELIAHU INBAL • MAHLER 6 Singapore Symphony Orchestra Eliahu Inbal, conductor GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony No. 6 in A minor “Tragic” 79’00

1. Allegro energico, ma non troppo 2. Scherzo. Wuchtig 3. Andante moderato 4. Finale. Allegro moderato

There will be no intermission during this performance.

Concert duration: 1 hr 35 mins Go green. Digital programme booklets are available on www.sso.org.sg.

Scan the QR code in the foyer to view a copy.

S ing a p or e S y mp hon y Or c he s t r a ‘A fine display of orchestral bravado for the SSO and Shui’ The Guardian

Since its founding in 1979, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) has been Singapore’s flagship orchestra, touching lives through classical music and providing the heartbeat of the cultural scene in the cosmopolitan city-state. In addition to its subscription series concerts, the orchestra is well-loved for its outdoor and community appearances, and its significant role educating the young people of Singapore. The SSO has also earned an international reputation for its orchestral virtuosity, having garnered sterling reviews for its overseas tours and many successful recordings.

The SSO makes its performing home at the 1,800-seat state-of-the-art Esplanade Concert Hall. More intimate works and all outreach and community performances take place at the

673-seat Victoria Concert Hall, the home of the SSO. The orchestra performs 100 concerts a year, and its versatile repertoire spans alltime favourites and orchestral masterpieces to exciting cutting-edge premieres. Bridging the musical traditions of East and West, Singaporean and Asian musicians and composers are regularly showcased in the concert season. This has been a core of the SSO’s programming philosophy from the very beginning under Choo Hoey, who was Music Director from 1979 to 1996.

Since Lan Shui assumed the position of Music Director in 1997, the SSO has performed in Europe, Asia and the United States. In May 2016 the SSO was invited to perform at the Dresden Music Festival and the Prague Spring International Music Festival. This successful five‑city tour of

Germany and Prague also included the SSO’s return to the Berlin Philharmonie after six years.

In 2014 the SSO’s debut at the 120th BBC Proms in London received critical acclaim in the major UK newspapers The Guardian and Telegraph. The SSO has also performed in China on multiple occasions.

Notable SSO releases under BIS include a Rachmaninov series, a “Seascapes” album, two Debussy discs “La Mer” and “Jeux”, and the first-ever cycle of Tcherepnin’s piano concertos and symphonies. The SSO has also collaborated with such great artists as Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Diana Damrau, Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Janine Jansen, Leonidas Kavakos and Gil Shaham.

E L IAHU INB A L conductor

In Inbal, one can trace the clear traits of role models and teachers such as Franco Ferrara and Sergiu Celibidache; he possesses the strength for tranquillity and the sense to create unbridled passion and dramatic effect. — Die Welt Since winning First Prize in the Cantelli Conducting Competition at the age of 26, Eliahu Inbal has enjoyed an international career, conducting leading orchestras worldwide. Over the years, he has been appointed Principal Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (hrSinfonieorchester), Teatro La Fenice in Venice, RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Czech Philharmonic and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, who named him Conductor Laureate in 2014.

During his tenure with the hr-Sinfonieorchester (1974—1990), whose Honorary Conductor he remains today, Eliahu Inbal distinguished himself as an outstanding musical personality of our time. The charismatic Israeli conductor, who lives in Berlin, received international acclaim for his interpretations of Mahler and Bruckner on a number of award-winning recordings (Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, Grand Prix du Disque) and was the first to record the original versions of Bruckner’s symphonies. In particular, he has received special recognition for his interpretations of Dmitri Shostakovich’s symphonies.

2016 marked Eliahu Inbal’s 80th birthday. Throughout the year, he was featured as a guest conductor with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR) in Basel, Vienna and at the Spring Festival in MonteCarlo. He conducted Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France at the Philharmonie de Paris, Symphony No. 4 at the Konzerthaus Berlin and the Alte Oper Frankfurt, and

Symphony No. 8 with the Orchestra del Teatro la Fenice. In 2017, he led Bruckner’s Eighth at the Philharmonie de Paris, as well as Mahler’s Eighth at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg shortly after its opening, and he toured Seoul and Japan with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin. In spring 2018 he will return to Asia for two months, on the invitation of orchestras including the China Philharmonic, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and the Singapore Symphony.

Born in Israel, Eliahu Inbal studied violin and composition at the Jerusalem Music Academy before completing his studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris on the recommendation of Leonard Bernstein. His teachers there included Louis Fourestier, Olivier Messiaen and Nadia Boulanger. He was also greatly influenced by Franco Ferrara in Hilversum (Netherlands) and Sergiu Celibidache in Siena (Italy). In 1990, the French government named Eliahu Inbal an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters. In February 2001 he was awarded the Golden Medal for Merit from the city of Vienna. He received the Goethe Badge of Honour from the City of Frankfurt and the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany in 2006.

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SSO MU SICIAN S Lan Shui Music Director joshua tan Associate Conductor jason lai Associate Conductor andrew litton Principal Guest Conductor Choo Hoey Conductor Emeritus Eudenice Palaruan Choral Director

FIRST VIOLIN Igor Yuzefovich° Concertmaster, The GK Goh Chair Lynnette Seah Co-Concertmaster Kong Zhao Hui* Associate Concertmaster Chan Yoong-Han Fixed Chair Cao Can* Chen Da Wei Duan Yu Ling Foo Say Ming Gu Wen Li Jin Li Cindy Lee Lim Shue Churn^ Sui Jing Jing Karen Tan William Tan Wei Zhe SECOND VIOLIN Zhao Tian^ Principal Michael Loh Associate Principal Hai-Won Kwok Fixed Chair Nikolai Koval* Lee Shi Mei^

Chikako Sasaki* Margit Saur Shao Tao Tao Lillian Wang Wu Man Yun* Xu Jue Yi* Ye Lin* Yeo Teow Meng Yin Shu Zhan* Zhang Si Jing* VIOLA Zhang Manchin Principal Guan Qi Associate Principal Gu Bing Jie* Fixed Chair Marietta Ku Luo Biao Julia Park Shui Bing Tan Wee-Hsin Janice Tsai Wang Dandan Yang Shi Li Yeo Jan Wea^ CELLO Ng Pei-Sian Principal Yu Jing Associate Principal Guo Hao Fixed Chair Chan Wei Shing Lin Juan^ Song Woon Teng Wang Yan Wang Zihao* Wu Dai Dai Zhao Yu Er DOUBLE BASS Guennadi Mouzyka Principal Yang Zheng Yi Associate Principal Karen Yeo Fixed Chair Olga Alexandrova Foo Yin Hong^ Ma Li Ming^ Jacek Mirucki Wang Xu FLUTE Jin Ta Principal Evgueni Brokmiller Associate Principal

Roberto Alvarez Miao Shanshan Wang Tong^

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CELESTE Shane Thio^

*With deep appreciation to the Rin Collection for their generous loan of string instruments. °Igor Yuzefovich plays an instrument generously loaned by Mr & Mrs G K Goh ^Musician on temporary contract Musicians listed alphabetically by family name rotate their seats on a per programme basis.

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G U S TAV MAHL ER (18 6 0 -1911) Symphony No. 6 in A minor “Tragic”

79’00

“There is only one Sixth, despite the Pastoral.” (Alban Berg to Anton Webern, 1908) Mahler, known to us as the great symphonist who wanted to express the universe in his music, never always enjoyed the secure reputation he now does in the great halls of the world. His music fell out of favour after his death, banned by the Nazis, and only the championing of Leonard Bernstein and other great non-German conductors rescued him from being forgotten.

He was racked by a weak constitution and a tumultuous marriage on top of his immense self-doubt, and by the time it came to the composition of the Sixth Symphony he had only really been feted by audiences for his Fourth.

On that happy evening he had been made to conduct the whole symphony straight through again. He then left behind that optimistic sound world, stripping down his orchestration and starting anew. And since the craft of a composer can always be best seen in their miniatures, let’s turn to the Rückert-Lieder: leaner orchestration, cleaner lines, more angular, and more poignant. The exuberance of the young Wunderhorn years was over.

When discussing Mahler, reference is usually made to his life: how important his wife Alma was to him, how much he loved his children, how anti-Semitism ruined job opportunities, how he was always in friendly antagonism with Richard Strauss. Strauss outlived Mahler by many years and was never on friendly terms with Alma, and her biography of Mahler, a masterpiece of revisionist history, only served to push them further apart.

“Mahler is always seeking redemption, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to be redeemed from!” (Richard Strauss) This search for redemption is evident right at the beginning of the Sixth Symphony, when a menacing bass pounding ushers in a huge funeral march, fiercely set in a minor key, the frenzy of instruments trading high notes only held back by the relentless beat. Amidst this, a soaring lyrical theme appears in the violins that he called his “Alma” motif, and for the first time, the beat is allowed to slacken and be pulled around by the passion of the music.

These two ideas remain in opposition for the rest of the movement, though the optimistic ending means Alma has gained the upper hand for now.

What is important to remember in Mahler is that his music is always about the voice. Whether he actually employs human voices, as in his huge choral symphonies (the “Resurrection” Symphony, or the later “Symphony of a Thousand”), or writes beautiful love songs for orchestral forces (as in the Adagietto of the Fifth), Mahler always painstakingly establishes a symbolic human presence in the midst of his music. The triumph of the finale in the Fifth — which also starts with a funeral march — is ultimately humanist, and a representation of strength and hope from a world that was growing increasingly chaotic.

And yet in the Sixth Symphony, the voice seems always to be quelled and dissolved. Mahler takes delight in a very specific gesture: the transformation of a major chord, played by the brass, into a minor one. Heard close to the beginning, this idea recurs throughout the hour-and-a-half duration of the symphony in various guises, ever changing in meaning.

Alma’s optimistic end to the first movement is immediately crushed by the sardonic Scherzo. Timpani strokes and horns recall the pounding opening of the movement, but instead of a march, the orchestra segues into a sort of possessed waltz. Dissonant and haughty, it is intended as a musical joke, Mahler including directions like “grandfatherly” (Alt-väterisch) in the score.

The music pretends to be many things it is not, and even if the pastoral country-dance sections have a quite unexpected grace, they only serve to throw the nihilism of the other sections into contrast.

Our one moment of respite comes in the third movement, which the second violins open with one of the most beautiful melodies Mahler ever penned.

Along with the Adagietto of the Fifth, this is Mahler’s great orchestral tribute to song, but even here the major-minor conflict never dies down. Certainly, this movement is peaceful and broad, recalling the countryside, but it is more wistful and nostalgic than a truly happy movement. The sounds of the country, symbolised in the use of the cowbell (the Almglocken — a pun on Alma), only appear in the moments of greatest agitation, as if a little avenue of escape for the musical memory…

Commentaries on the life of Mahler always mention that he wrote the Sixth Symphony during what was otherwise the most happy time of his life. His second child had just been born, Alma had not quite embarked on her

string of infidelities, and his first daughter’s death from scarlet fever was still four years away. During the same years, he also composed a set of Kindertotenlieder, or Songs on the Death of Children. The wife was perplexed by the sombre mood of the works, fearing he was tempting fate.

Certainly the famous hammer blows of the final movement would seem so.

The music repeatedly builds to various climaxes, always starting with a harp glissando and a rising theme in the violins, followed by low brass coming in one after the other. Mahler is literally calling forth and building up his voices, as it were, but each time the music seems to get anywhere, the percussionist picks up his hammer and everything crashes down again.

And here even Mahler did not dare to go too far: he scratched out the third of his hammer strokes, because that was the symbol of death. The majorto-minor chord is heard many times throughout this movement, the sign of something menacing ever approaching. All of this is mixed with all kinds of music: dances, marches, lyrical scenes, but in the last four bars of the score, when this cry breaks out for the final time, it is purely in the minor key. We are left bereft, staring into the abyss.

Mahler’s life would slip off the path of happiness only a few years later: he did not live to hear his immense Song of the Earth and his Ninth Symphony, and would not complete his Tenth. He was uncomfortable and homesick when conducting in America, and the transatlantic journeys took their toll on his health; he died in Vienna of complications brought on by heart disease.

In his own words, “I had to write these then... I would not have been able to write them after my child’s death.” In his essential humanity and wish to compose everything into his music, he sought out darkness and death in the prime of his life, reminding himself of his own fragility. He must have welcomed them when they finally arrived.

Programme notes by Thomas Ang

RECOMMENDED LISTENING 1) Mahler: Symphonies No. 1 & 5 Eliahu Inbal & Radio-Sinfonie Orchestra Frankfurt (Denon, 2007)

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