GUSTAV MAHLER

SYMPHONY NO. 1
1 I. Langsam, schleppend - Wie ein Naturlaut 16.26
2 II. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell 8.27
3 III. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen 11.19
4 IV. Stürmisch bewegt 20.44
Total timings: 56.57

Recorded at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London, 12 April 2011

Producer – Misha Donat
Engineer – Jonathan Stokes, Classic Sound Ltd
Design – With Relish (for the Philharmonia Orchestra) and Darren Rumney
Cover image CLebrecht Music & Arts

P2013 Philharmonia Orchestra

C2013 Signum Records

PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA
LORIN MAAZEL CONDUCTOR
www.signumrecords.com

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 GUSTAV MAHLER
SYMPHONY NO. 2, RESURRECTION
CD1
1 I. Allegro maestoso 25.13
CD2
1 II. Andante moderato. Sehr gemächlich 11.25
2 III. Scherzo. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung 12.14
3 IV. ‘Urlicht’. Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht 5.23
4 V. Finale 38.32
Total timings: 92.41

PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA
BBC SYMPHONY CHORUS
SALLY MATTHEWS SOPRANO
MICHELLE DEYOUNG MEZZO-SOPRANO
LORIN MAAZEL CONDUCTOR
www.signumrecords.com

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 GUSTAV MAHLER
SYMPHONY NO. 3
CD1
Part One
1 I. Kräftig. Entscheiden 37.46
CD2
Part Two
2 II. Tempo di Menuetto. Sehr mässig 11.32
3 III. Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast 17.39
4 IV. Sehr langsam. Misterioso 9.10
5 V. Lustig im Tempo und keck in Ausdruck 4.15
6 VI. Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden 25.51
Total timings: 68.29

PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA
PHILHARMONIA VOICES
TIFFIN BOYS’ CHOIR
SARAH CONNOLLY MEZZO-SOPRANO
LORIN MAAZEL CONDUCTOR
www.signumrecords.com

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“On Mahler”
A century after his death, Mahler’s music
resonates more powerfully than ever. Its
unique mix of passionate intensity and
terrifying self-doubt seems to speak directly to
our age. One moment visionary, the next
despairing, this is music that sweeps us up in
its powerful current and draws us along in its
drama. We feel its moments of ecstatic rapture
and catastrophic loss as if they were our own.
This is not music for detached contemplation:
it matters to us, urgently and directly. Its
musical language may be romantic, but what
makes Mahler’s music so distinctively modern
is its unflinching honesty – its embrace of the
contradictions of life and of art. Few
composers wrote music of such searing lyrical
intensity, nor music that is often ironic to the
point of parody. But it took a long time for this
unique tone to be understood; in his own
time, critics heard Mahler’s ability to see the
world from several perspectives as a sign of
insincerity. Today, we tend to read it as quite
the opposite.
5
Mahler’s earlier symphonies frequently draw
on the world of his Wunderhorn songs –
settings of simple folk poems about birds and
animals, saints and sinners, soldiers and their
lovers. But this apparently naive, even childlike
tone is found alongside vast musical
canvasses that depict the end of the world. In
quieter, more intimate movements, Mahler
seems to speak intimately and directly to the
listener, but the big outer movements are
addressed to the entire world. At its most
sentimental, Mahler’s music echoes the fairy-
tales of children’s picture books, yet in the
next moment it marches with gritted teeth and
unleashes terrifying violence.
All this makes for great symphonic dramas,
often lasting more than an hour, which imply a
vivid sense of storytelling without ever being
confined to a specific programme (as a young
man, Mahler adopted the idea of programmes
from the tone poems of Richard Strauss, but
soon abandoned them). This is a composer
who insisted that the symphony should
‘include the whole world’ – hence its
bewildering mix of different characters, and and annotations on his scores, he encouraged
the sense that, for him, it worked rather like listening to his music as a kind of
the great novels of the 19th century, such as autobiography, as Berlioz had before him.
those by Dostoyevsky or Balzac.
But like all great art, Mahler’s music far
We should remember that Mahler was a man exceeds the life that made it, just as it far
of the theatre who, for the 30 years of his exceeds his own age. His symphonies look
professional life, spent most of his time and back to those of Beethoven and Schubert, but
energy conducting in the opera house. He at the same time forwards to the music of
knew how to create an effect, to stage a scene Shostakovich and Britten. In his later works he
and to pace a drama. But, like anyone who has was increasingly drawn to the music of Bach,
worked in the theatre, he had an acute sense at the same time that his own music was
that all art is ultimately artifice and make- revered by the young Schoenberg and his
believe. His favourite writers were those whose pupils. This is music that crosses historical
works underline their own fictionality which is boundaries – as contemporary and vital now
why, after the dust of the drama has settled, as it was a hundred years ago.
there is a quality of Mahler’s music that recalls
the enchanted forest of Shakespeare’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Perhaps it is this many-sided character to the

music that feeds our fascination with Mahler
himself. Of course, this was fuelled by the
composer. Mahler subscribed fully to the
Romantic idea that art is made from the life of
the artist and, in comments to friends, letters, Maestro Lorin Maazel

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Symphony No. 1 (1888) he had removed the movement, clearly the
music to a love scene, Mahler referred to it as
Mahler suggested that his First Symphony and his hero’s ‘blunder of youth’.
the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen arose
from similar situations and the degree of The première, in November 1889, was
overlap between them is certainly striking. For conducted by the composer in Budapest
a start, the symphony takes some of its where Mahler had recently become Artistic
material from the song cycle – the main theme Director to the Royal Hungarian Opera. Clearly
of the first movement is derived from the undecided as to what kind of work he had
carefree walking song Ging heut’ Morgen written, Mahler presented the work as a
über’s Feld, and the dream vision at the end of ‘Symphonic Poem in Two Parts’, thus aligning
the cycle reappears in the third movement of himself with the modernity of Richard Strauss
the symphony. But just as the songs were rather than the more conservative tradition of
composed in the wake of Mahler’s failed Brahms. But critics and public alike were
relationship with Johanna Richter, so the perplexed by the abrupt changes of mood,
symphony was completed, at fever pitch in the especially between the spring-like atmosphere
spring of 1888, following the ending of his of the first three movements (Part I) and then
affair with Marion von Weber (wife of the the sudden reversal of character in Part II, with
composer’s grandson). In fact, it seems likely its funeral march and highly dramatic Finale.
that the beginnings of the symphony go back Not for the last time, there was a demand for
to Mahler’s time in Kassel, and thus overlap the composer to provide a more helpful
with the composition of the songs. In its commentary to his music.
original form it had five movements, including
an Andante (Blumine) composed in 1884 as The work languished for four years without a
part of Mahler’s incidental music for the verse further performance, until 1893 when a
play, Der Trompeter von Säkkingen. Later, after revised version was performed in Hamburg,

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but Mahler’s ambivalence about the nature of
his work was still unresolved. He referred to it
both as a ‘Tone Poem in Symphonic Form’ and
as a ‘Symphony’. Stung by the critics’
comments at the première, he now provided
programmatic titles for each movement and
the whole work was titled ‘Titan’, apparently in
reference to a novel by Jean-Paul Richter. Part 1
(From the Days of Youth: Flower, Fruit and
Thorn pieces) consisted of three movements:
1. Spring without end; 2. Blumine; 3. Under
full sail. Part II (Commedia humana) was
made up of 4. The Huntsman’s Funeral
Procession, a Death March in Callot’s Manner;
and 5. ‘Dall’ Inferno al Paradiso’.
By the time of the work’s fourth performance,
in Berlin in 1896, Mahler had removed the
Blumine movement altogether, and presented
the work simply as a ‘Symphony in D major for
full orchestra’, but his anxiety about
explanatory programmes persisted. For the
Viennese première in 1900, Mahler ensured
that his own comments on the movements
were fed to a leading newspaper by his friend
and confidante, Natalie Bauer-Lechner. Even
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so, critics reacted badly to the sense that this
was indeed programmatic music, but with the
programme withdrawn. One called it ‘a satire
of the symphony’ while others dubbed it, in
comparison with Beethoven’s Eroica, a
sinfonia ironica. One listener recorded in her
diary: ‘An astonishing jumble of styles – and
an ear-splitting, nerve-shattering din. I had
never heard anything like it. It was exhilarating,
but no less irritating.’ That was the impression
of the young Alma Schindler; she became
Mahler’s wife less than four months later.
If a symphony should contain the whole world,
as Mahler was famously to suggest, it is fitting
that his First Symphony begins as if it were the
beginning of the world. The slow introduction is
marked Wie ein Naturlaut (like a sound of
nature) and is one of Mahler’s most sustained
landscape evocations – a musical depiction of
dawn in which the distant sound of horns and
military fanfares overlap with bird calls against
a background haze of string harmonics.
Mahler described it as the awakening of
nature out of the long sleep of winter, ushering
in ‘spring without end’. What follows is an
exuberant Allegro, based on the bright energy
of the second Gesellen song. But the divided
world of the song cycle is not left behind; the
sunny Allegro is cut short by a return to the
slow introduction, and the central
development section sees yet another return
to this mysterious landscape. The lonely
wanderer can still be heard in the mournful
dialogue between the cellos and a forest bird
(solo flute). In Mahler’s music the beauty of
nature is often the site of human loneliness
but also the threshold to new life. The return to
the Allegro is marked by a quiet horn call; by
the end of the movement it is given fortissimo
in great youthful whoops.
The second movement opens with an
energetic country dance, derived from one of
Mahler’s earliest songs (‘Maitanz in Grünen’,
or ‘Hans und Grete’). Mahler’s real fondness
for the heavy-footed pleasure of this Ländler is
clear; to the traditional folk material he adds
a new contrasting section, more chromatic
and stormy, which acts as a foil to the return
of the rustic simplicity of the opening. This is a
staged village scene, not the real thing, and
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Mahler’s movement is not hard to hear in
terms of a scene from an opera – or operetta.
The village dance of the outer sections gives
way, in the central Trio, to more intimate
exchanges – as if the chorus disperses to
frame a rather flirtatious and slightly tipsy
scene between the soloists. This is based on a
slow waltz, characterised as sentimental and
wistful by the sighing glissandi in the strings
and the constant elasticity of the tempo.
The start of the third movement remains
shocking even to modern listeners. A timpanist
beats out a mechanical rhythm, over which a
solo double-bass plays the children’s song,
Bruder Martin (Frères Jacques) in a minor key.
The macabre effect of playing a nursery song
as a funeral march is enhanced by the thin
tone of the double-bass – an early example of
Mahler’s use of the grotesque. It must have
been utterly bewildering to Mahler’s first
audience – as if an old tramp had walked out
to sing on the stage of the Court Opera. But
worse is to come, because the march is later
interrupted by what seems like a band of
street-corner buskers, the two different
musical types grating awkwardly against one
another. Into this nightmare, however, is
inserted the vision from the end of the
Gesellen songs – just another kind of unreality
in Mahler’s dreamscape. The title supplied for
this movement offers some background to the
strange nature of this imaginative world. The
Huntsman’s Funeral was a picture by Moritz
von Schwind in a popular children’s fairytale
book, in which the hunstman’s cortège is
formed by the animals of the forest. With the
phrase ‘in Callot’s manner’, Mahler signalled
his sense of kinship with the weird and
distorted tales of another of his favourite
authors, ETA Hoffmann.
This weird fantasy world is interrupted by the
Finale erupting, in Mahler’s words, as a
‘sudden outburst of despair from a deeply
wounded heart’. A storm of orchestral violence
is unleashed here, completely at odds with the
symphony so far. When this eventually
subsides into a brooding silence, it is followed © Julian Johnson
by one of Mahler’s most beautifully shaped
melodies. The marking for the strings is sehr
gesangvoll (very songful), a direction he used
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when he wanted instruments to imitate the
tone of a singer. It appears like a distant vision
of a longed-for goal – but firmly in parenthesis.
Taken as a whole, the Finale presents a
complex narrative of anticipated breakthroughs,
interruptions and re-beginnings. A chorale
theme in D major suggests that victory may be
in reach, before the music collapses back to
nothingness and a return to the mysterious
state of nature with which the whole symphony
began. The mood is more melancholic now –
the wandering lad is older and wiser – but the
encounter with nature becomes a threshold to
eventual victory. As the falling fourths rain
down in the repeated horn phrases of the
chorale, like the tolling of bells, it is hard not
to be swept along by the sense that, in this
music, Mahler has made real his vision. If the
Gesellen songs were about loss, then the First
Symphony is about returning to that earlier
loss and making it good.
Symphony No. 2, Resurrection movement of the Second Symphony, Mahler
(1894) specifically underlined the overlap between the
two works, insisting that in this movement ‘it is
Mahler’s Second Symphony was already begun the hero of my D major symphony [the First]
before his First had received its première. whom I bear to the grave’.
Indeed, the composition in 1888 of a
movement in C minor, later to become the first So why, if the huge first movement was already
movement of the Second Symphony, seems to in place by the summer of 1888, did it take
have overlapped with the completion of the Mahler seven years to bring his Second
First. It shares with the Finale of the First the Symphony to completion? The disappointing
same tone of high drama and desperate heroic reception of his First, in 1889, may well have
struggle, but now played out on a grander, been a factor, and he was certainly
more objective scale. Moreover, there is good preoccupied with forging his career as a
evidence to suggest that it had its origins in the conductor (he became Director of the Royal
same upheavals of Mahler’s life – not least, the Hungarian Opera in Budapest, 1889, and
ending of his affair with Marion von Weber. By Principal Conductor at Hamburg Stadttheater
the autumn of 1888, Mahler had decided that in 1891). But with the revision of his First
this movement was a single-movement Symphony in 1893, and the promise of a
symphonic poem, which he called Todtenfeier second performance, he seems to have
(Funeral Rites). The scholar Stephen Hefling returned to the idea of a second symphony. In
has shown that the title and the mood are the intervening years Mahler was certainly not
probably derived from the long dramatic poem, inactive as a composer. This is the period in
Dziady, by the Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz, which he wrote the majority of his Wunderhorn
translated by Mahler’s close friend, Siegfried songs, a first group for voice and piano, and a
Lipiner, early in 1887. And, much later, after second group conceived as orchestral songs.
the symphonic poem had become the first And it was through the Wunderhorn settings

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that Mahler seems to have found his way back Mahler’s increasing frustration at being unable
to symphonic composition. to ‘discover’ the elusive conclusion to his
symphony was famously broken during a
He spent the summer of 1893 in the small memorial service held for the great Wagnerian
village of Steinbach on the Attersee (one of the conductor, Hans von Bülow, in March 1894.
beautiful lakes of Austria’s Salzkammergut The sound of a boys choir, placed high up in
region). As he turned 33 years old that July, the cathedral, singing a setting of Klopstock’s
Mahler had written two ‘symphonic poems’ and Resurrection Chorale, mingled with the funeral
some songs, but nothing currently designated bells, seems to have crystallised Mahler’s
as a symphony. The day after his birthday, he thinking. After conducting a performance of
completed the Wunderhorn song Des Antonius Siegfried’s Funeral Music from Wagner’s
von Padua Fischpredigt and, within eight days, Götterdämmerung on the steps of the
had turned it into the symphonic Scherzo that cathedral, he reportedly hurried home to
would become the third movement of the sketch the ideas for his own Finale.
Second Symphony. A few days later he
completed his setting of ‘Urlicht’, which would Whatever its personal origins, the first
become the fourth movement, and by the end movement of the Second Symphony conveys
of July he had completed the genial Ländler an overwhelming sense of collective
movement that would become the second catastrophe. It shares its C minor tonality and
(based on two themes sketched back in the dark tone with Siegfried’s Funeral Music and
summer of 1888). takes from that orchestral interlude something
of its slow processional character. It has a
The following year Mahler revised his Wagnerian scale about it too, not just because
symphonic poem Todtenfeier as the first of its large orchestral forces but because of
movement of his symphony, which was now the extended timescale with which Mahler
essentially complete except for its Finale. works. Great lines of marching figures seem to

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emerge from out of the distance as far as the this wistful dance movement is certainly a
eye can see; the writer Rudolf Stephan world away from the stark opening movement.
referred to the Second Symphony as ‘music Its echo of Schubert underlines the sense that
drama without scenery’ and it is certainly hardMahler’s music here is an act of nostalgia, a
not to think of movements like this one in suchrecollected moment of earlier happiness from
visual or even filmic terms. The ferocious the life of his symphonic hero, as Mahler was
opening of the work (more a sudden violent to characterise it later. If Schubert is evoked by
gesture than a musical motif) and the ensuing the opening dance, the contrasting section
march figure give way to one of Mahler’s most that follows is closer to the fairy music of
pleading second themes, but its vision of quietMendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
deliverance is, at this stage, still impossiblyor some of Weber’s evocations of the
distant. The movement as a whole seems supernatural. The movement is not without its
defined instead by the snarling returns of the passing clouds, and distant rumbling on the
opening and the implacable force of the horizon, but the successive returns of the
heavily orchestrated march. leisurely Ländler seem progressively removed
from reality and the enduring sense of the
Mahler was so concerned about the difference music is that of an ethereal memory.
in character between the first movement and
the gentle Andante that follows, he noted in The Scherzo third movement is an orchestral
the score that the conductor should take a expansion of Mahler’s setting of the
pause of several minutes between the two Wunderhorn song Des Antonius von Padua
(most take considerably less). It seems an Fischpredigt, which tells of St Anthony’s
odd anxiety for a composer whose sermon to the fishes. The satirical thrust of the
symphonies generally proceed by extreme poem derives from the fact that, although the
oppositions between one movement and the fish listen patiently to the sermon and find it
next. Marked Sehr gemächlich (Very leisurely), excellent, they afterwards all revert to their

13
usual bad ways. The orchestration makes this
ironic intent clear enough – the running
semiquaver figure sometimes spirals out of
key, moments highlighted by the E flat clarinet,
which Mahler often uses to comic or grotesque
effect. This figure, running like a thread
throughout the movement, is generally heard
as expressive of what Mahler referred to as
‘this ever-moving, never-resting, never-
comprehensible bustle of existence’. There are
moments of impatience with this futile circling
as the music is interrupted by unprepared
moments of breakthrough, fleeting anticipations
of the great apocalypse of the Finale. For a
moment, suspended on a higher plateau, with
the distant rumblings of earthly music
sounding far below, the Scherzo guesses at a
different perspective, before the incessant
wheels start turning again.
If the Scherzo is a picture of an inauthentic
chattering world, with no time for the divine, the
fourth movement shatters it with quiet, focused
intensity. Following directly on from the end of
the previous movement, ‘Urlicht’ begins with
the exposed sound of the human voice, the
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female soloist accompanied by the brass,
solemnly intoning a chorale. The humour, ironic
play and loquacious repetition of the previous
movement give way, in a single moment, to the
simplicity and sincerity of this new presence. In
fact, the religious tone is only the first of three
distinct ‘voices’ Mahler deploys in this short
movement. The sacred opening yields to a folk
tone for the start of the second verse
describing a meeting with an angel (Mahler’s
angelic topic is clearly signalled by the bright
sounds of glockenspiel, harp and solo violin).
But the tone changes once again: the
protagonist of the song will not be turned back
from the path, even by an angel: the words ‘I
am from God, and will return to God’ are set to
a harmonic sequence that draws on an
impassioned, operatic mode. And with that,
the timeless perspectives of religious and folk
music succumb to an urgent sense of the
present moment. It is the turning point of the
work. This one line might serve as the motto
for the entire symphony, and Mahler will return
to it, sung by both soloists, as preparation for
the climax of the Finale.
The vision of that Finale is hardly an orthodox
Christian one. The symphony acquired the title
Resurrection because of its use of Klopstock’s
Resurrection Ode but Mahler was rarely
content to leave texts unchanged and, in this
case, to the two verses taken from Klopstock
he added a further six of his own. The tone of
these is quite different. After the solidity of
faith of the opening chorale, Mahler’s own text
introduces a far more modern anxiety: ‘O
glaube, mein Herz’ (‘O believe, my heart’)
sounds more like a desperate urging to
oneself to believe, rather than any calm
statement of faith. And the resurrection of the
dead, in Mahler’s eschatology, suggests he
was influenced by contemporary ideas on
religion, like those of his friend Siegfried
Lipiner or the psychologist Gustav Fechner,
whose ideas were to help shape the
philosophical programme of the Third
Symphony. ‘And behold,’ Mahler wrote about
the ending of his symphony, ‘there is no
judgement; there are no sinners, no just. None
is great, none small. There is no punishment
and no reward. An overwhelming love
illuminates our being. We know and are.’
15
But that is a long way off. The Finale opens
with a kind of musical chaos, a ‘cry of disgust’
that parallels the ‘fanfare of horror’ at the start
of the Finale to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
(the larger parallel of a choral finale naturally
caused Mahler some anxiety). It subsides to a
startling emptiness in which the sound of
distant horn calls mingles with disembodied
orchestral sounds. A slow marching chorale
begins, interspersed with the anxious motif
that Mahler later uses for the line ‘O glaube’
(‘O believe’). ‘The earth quakes, the graves
burst open, the dead arise and stream out in
endless procession’ – Mahler’s programme
note hardly sums up the vast march that
follows. But all of this is preparation for what
will become the threshold upon which the
whole symphony is transformed and this,
typically of Mahler, comes out of a deep
silence and a sense of vast spaciousness.
In Mahler’s words: ‘The last trumpet is heard –
the trumpets of the Apocalypse ring out: in the
eerie silence that follows, we can just catch
the distant, barely audible sound of a
nightingale, a last tremulous echo of earthly
life.’ For this, Mahler produces a bold
soundscape that still sounds utterly
contemporary. Distant horns are answered by
four trumpets placed at different offstage
locations, on the right and the left, variously
closer and further away. These echoing brass
sounds, apparently coming from a great
distance, mingle with the sound of a bird given
by a flute and piccolo from within the
orchestra. There are few passages in
symphonic music that come close to the way
in which Mahler stops time here. Any sense of
metre is suspended, and with it any sense of
measuring time or forward motion. In a large
hall it makes for an astonishing scene. The
orchestra sits in silence listening to calls from
outside the space of the music, and we, the
audience, watch and wait for something to
arrive, as if from elsewhere. What does arrive is
the ‘Resurrection’ chorale, sung by the chorus
in such hushed tones one hardly hears it
begin. The threshold has been crossed, and
the mingling of voices and orchestra expands
steadily, wave upon wave, towards the
shattering climax of the symphony.
16
One should not be fooled by the force of the
closing bars, generated by Mahler’s relatively
conventional treatment of the brass and
organ. The end of this symphony is neither
comfortable nor bombastic. It is not just that
the music has been preparing, for over an
hour, the arrival at the climactic ‘Sterben werd’
ich, um zu leben’ (‘Die I shall, so as to live’),
nor that Mahler has held back the vast power
of his combined choral and orchestral forces
for this moment. It is that, when it arrives, it is
not experienced so much as a point of
resolution that will subside, but rather as an
unending torrent of incandescent intensity.
Across a vast span of time and in five very
different movements, Mahler’s music has
explored the human experience of time – of
loss, anticipation, memory, cyclical repetition
and, above all, of waiting, straining for the
dawn. The ending seems to draw up all of this,
and with it the whole of historical and
eschatological time and to focus it, urgently
and intensely, in this very moment, here and
now. It’s all you can do to stand your ground as
this wind of fire streams out at you.
© Julian Johnson
TEXTS
Urlicht auf Des Knaben Wunderhorn
O Röschen roth!
Der Mensch liegt in größter Noth!
Der Mensch liegt in größter Pein!
Je lieber möcht’ ich in Himmel sein!
Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg;
Da kam ein Engelein und wollt’ mich abweisen.
Ach nein! Ich ließ mich nicht abweisen:
Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott!
Der liebe Gott wird mir ein Lichtchen geben,
Wird leuchten mir bis in das ewig selig Leben!
Primal Light from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
O little red rose!
Man lies in the greatest need!
Man lies in the greatest suffering!
How much rather would I be in Heaven!
I came upon a broad road;
There came an angel and wanted to block my way.
Ah no! I did not let myself be turned away:
I am of God, and to God I shall return!
Dear God will grant me a small light,
Will light my way to eternal, blissful life!
17 11
Aufersteh’n Resurrection

Aufersteh’n, ja aufersteh’n wirst du, Arise, yes, you will arise from the dead,
Mein Staub, nach kurzer Ruh! My dust, after a short rest!
Unsterblich Leben Eternal life
Wird der dich rief dir geben. Will be given you by Him who called you.

Wieder aufzublüh’n wirst du gesät! To bloom again are you sown!

Der Herr der Ernte geht The lord of the harvest goes
Und sammelt Garben And gathers the sheaves,
Uns ein, die starben. Us who have died.
by Friedrich Klopstock by Friedrich Klopstock

O glaube, mein Herz, o glaube: O believe, my heart, oh believe:

Es geht dir nichts verloren! Nothing will be lost to you!

Dein ist, was du gesehnt! Everything is yours that you have desired!
Dein, was du geliebt, Yours, what you have loved,
was du gestritten! what you have struggled for!

O glaube: O believe:
Du wardst nicht umsonst geboren! You were not born in vain!
Hast nicht umsonst gelebt, gelitten! Have not lived in vain, suffered in vain!

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Was entstanden ist, das muß vergehen! What was created must perish!
Was vergangen, auferstehen! What has perished must rise again!
Hör’ auf zu beben! Tremble no more!
Bereite dich zu leben! Prepare yourself to live!
O Schmerz! Du Alldurchdringer! O Sorrow, all-penetrating!
Dir bin ich entrungen! I have been wrested away from you!
O Tod! Du Allbezwinger! O Death, all-conquering!
Nun bist du bezwungen! Now you are conquered!
Mit Flügeln, die ich mir errungen With wings that I won
In heißem Liebesstreben In the passionate strivings of love
Werd’ ich entschweben I shall mount
Zum Licht, zu dem kein Aug’ gedrungen! To the light to which no sight has penetrated!
Sterben werd’ ich, um zu leben! Die I shall, so as to live!

Aufersteh’n, ja aufersteh’n wirst du, Arise, yes, you will arise from the dead,
Mein Herz, in einem Nu! My heart, in an instant!
Was du geschlagen, What you have overcome,
Zu Gott wird es dich tragen! Will carry you to God!
by Gustav Mahler by Gustav Mahler

Recorded at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London, 17 April 2011

Producer – Misha Donat
Engineer – Jonathan Stokes, Classic Sound Ltd
Design – With Relish (for the Philharmonia Orchestra) and Darren Rumney
Cover image CLebrecht Music & Arts

P2013 Philharmonia Orchestra

C2013 Signum Records

19
 © Benjamin Ealovega

20
Symphony No. 3 (1895-96) unordered by the rational or moral codes of
modern society, and the music to his vast first
As he had been with both his First and Second movement certainly seems to bear this out.
symphonies, Mahler was initially ambivalent
about whether the Third was indeed a Like the Second Symphony, the Third is a mega-
symphony or a symphonic poem. The early symphony, a work with a cosmic ambition to
outline sketches from 1895 suggest various sum up the trajectory of creation itself, in
programmatic titles for individual movements Mahler’s own words ‘a musical poem embracing
and for the work as a whole. One such was all stages of development in a step-wise ascent
‘The Happy Life, a Midsummer Night’s Dream’, [that] begins with inanimate nature and
though without any intended reference to ascends to the love of God.’ This vast
Shakespeare’s play. Another was ‘Symphony conception has to be understood in the context
No. 3: The Joyful Science. A Summer Morning’s of an age that was highly attracted to grand, all-
Dream’. The reference here is to Nietzsche’s encompassing accounts of the natural world.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, usually translated Mahler had a lifelong interest in philosophical
as The Gay Science, published in 1882. If and scientific theories and read widely in these
there are any links between Mahler’s music areas, but he was also part of a cultural
and Nietzsche’s book they lie in a shared tone tradition in which artists and musicians
of irreverence rather than any philosophical expected to take on the great themes of life and
content. A third possible title was simply ‘Pan: death. He had a life-long devotion to the works
Symphonic Poems’. The reference to the Greek of Richard Wagner, whose last music drama
god Pan, the wild god of nature, was explicitly Parsifal (1882) was, at that time, still
linked in Mahler’s sketches to Dionysus, the performed only at Bayreuth under quasi-
god of wine but also of ecstatic ritual. In both religious conditions. Mahler’s Third Symphony
cases, Mahler’s reference seems to be to the thus grows out of an understanding of art as a
timeless force of an unrestrained nature, kind of religious and philosophical quest.

21
Given such a conception, Mahler was
understandably frustrated that his symphony
became known, before its première, almost
entirely through performances of one isolated
movement, the so-called ‘Blumenstück’
(Flower piece). In a letter to Richard Batka, of
February 1896, he expressed his concern that
the public would hear him simply as a
‘sensuous, perfumed singer of nature’:
‘That this nature hides within itself everything
that is frightful, great, and also lovely (which is
exactly what I wanted to express in the entire
work, in a sort of evolutionary development) – of
course no one ever understands this. It always
strikes me as odd that most people, when they
speak of ‘nature’, think only of flowers, little
birds and woodsy smells. No one knows the god
Dionysus, the great Pan. There now! You have a
sort of programme ... Everywhere and always, it
is only the voice of nature!’
Many commentators, including Mahler’s
contemporaries, heard in this work not just the
force of nature, but also that of the new
politics of a popular and mass society. Richard
22
Strauss likened the great march of the first
movement to the experience of a May Day
parade in the Prater Park in Vienna. The unison
horn call that opens the movements was
heard by some as the quotation of a 19th-
century student protest song, as used also by
Brahms in his Academic Festival Overture.
Critics railed against what they saw as the
symphony’s vulgar, banal and frivolous
elements, perplexed about how to understand
the sudden contrasts between the rarified
world of symphonic music and tunes and
rhythms more usually heard on the street. Was
Mahler trying to parody the hallowed genre of
the symphony in this way? Often, they
concluded that he was.
1. Summer Marches In (Pan Awakes)
This is an immense movement, conceived on a
vast scale – not just in terms of its duration
(over 30 minutes for this movement alone) but
in its unwieldy form and sheer weight of sound.
Few pieces of music evoke such a powerful
sense of ‘the world without form’, summoning
its materials out of a kind of primeval
emptiness. ‘It is eerie’, Mahler commented,
‘how from lifeless matter (I could just as well monosyllables it gradually learns to speak
have named the movement ‘What the with a lyricism and expressive tone that make
Mountains Tell Me’) life gradually breaks forth, great demands of the player. The entrance of
developing step-by-step into ever-higher forms summer and the displacing of winter are
of life.’ The opening call, played fortissimo on marked by a tremendous march, starting from
eight horns in unison, seems to echo into some the distance, converging from all directions
vast emptiness. A sombre march rhythm and eventually carrying all before it. In his
begins, the only hint of directed movement, annotations, Mahler marked one passage Der
amid low rumblings in the percussion. The Gesindel (The rabble) and another passage
emptiness is broken only by unpredictable Der Südsturm (The southern storm). These are
eruptive gestures, shooting skywards like the anarchic forces with which the world is
spouts of molten lava. ‘Some passages of it renewed, the unstoppable, irrational and
seem so uncanny to me’, Mahler later unordered harbingers of the new. Mahler
commented, ‘that I can hardly recognise them described the storm as ‘raging like the
as my own work.’ His representation of southern gale we are experiencing here these
elemental origins was, necessarily, also a days, and which – I am sure – brings with it
sounding of the Unconscious. fertility, coming from faraway, fruitful, hot
countries, not like the gentle east wind we
Out of this lifeless world, form and motion usually wish for. With a march tempo it roars,
gradually emerge. The first sense of a tangible closer and closer, louder and louder, swelling
identity is voiced by a solo trombone, which like an avalanche, until all the loud, jubilant
comes to assume an unlikely central role in noise engulfs you.’
this movement. It emerges from the rawness of
the opening section, calls into the silence, and 2. What the meadow flowers tell me
echoes out around the amphitheatre of The second movement sees a complete
lifeless matter. But from its initial stark change of voice; in place of massive energy

23
and force we are presented with utter
transparency and simplicity. Mahler’s Ländler
is marked grazioso, denoting a sense of ease
and perhaps even a gentle sentimentality. ‘It is
the most carefree music I have ever written’,
Mahler said, ‘as carefree as only flowers can
be.’ Its tremendous lightness of touch suggests
a chamber-orchestra style in which solo
orchestral voices often come to the fore. Like
many of Mahler’s inner movements, this is a
character piece, made up of contrasting
sections more like ballet music than the
symphonic narratives of Mahler’s outer
movements. A sense of dream-like fantasy is
never very distant here, more like the world of
Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
than the grand tone of Bruckner or Wagner.
3. What the creatures of the forest tell me
‘The Scherzo, the animal piece, is the most
ludicrous and at the same time the most
tragic ... This piece really sounds as if all
nature were making faces and sticking out its
tongue. But there is such a horrible, panic-like
humour in it that one is overcome with horror
rather than laughter.’ Mahler’s sense of horror
24
is perhaps less obvious to the modern listener,
who is more likely to hear the charm of this
movement. It is derived from one of Mahler’s
Wunderhorn songs but, as with the Scherzo of
the Second Symphony, turned here into a
purely instrumental movement. Der Ablösung
im Sommer (The change in summer) is typical
of his naïve folk-style. It tells of the ‘change of
the guard’ in the forest, from the spring
(represented by the cuckoo) to the summer
(represented by the nightingale). The
symphonic movement takes up some of the
simple humour of the song, in which the world
of the forest birds and animals takes on a self-
sufficient quality.
This world, however, is broken into by a distant
fanfare signalling the human world. The famous
‘posthorn’ interlude (written for a flügelhorn) is
directed to be played ‘as if from a great
distance’. It provides a wonderful example of
Mahler’s ability to create the haunting effect not
only of spatial distance – but also of temporal
distance. What starts out as a fanfare, such as
one might imagine hearing from a distant
posthorn, becomes a more sentimental folk-like
melody. It creates a powerful sense of yearning movement in the face of the dark
reminiscence – of looking back to a distant silence of nocturnal nature. In the context of
time. Mahler’s forest creatures, at first startled Nietzsche’s philosophical fable, this poem has
by this intrusion, begin to interact with the new to do with the prophet’s disgust at
voice. Two horns join in, and the rapt string contemporary man but also acts as an
chordal accompaniment is marked to be played expression of faith in his potential for
‘as if overhearing’. transformation. This threshold function is
exactly how Mahler’s setting of it works within
4. What night tells me the Third Symphony – as a borderland
The fourth movement brings the distant sound between one state of consciousness and
of the human world centre-stage as, for the another, a place where the earthly and the
first time in this work, we hear the human heavenly overlap.
voice. An alto soloist delivers a setting of the
dark ‘Midnight Song’ from Nietzsche’s Also 5. What the morning bells tell me
sprach Zarathustra (Strauss’s tone poem of The brooding, meditative and deeply solemn
that title was written at exactly the same time, tone of Nietzsche’s ‘Midnight Song’ gives way
1896). It begins in the depths of night, with a to the light-hearted humorous tone of ‘Es
deeply mysterious atmosphere created by sungen drei Engel’ (‘Three angels were
Mahler’s withholding any familiar sense of singing’). Mahler’s performance direction is
musical movement. In its place, we hear only keck (cheeky), and it begins with a boys’ choir
the gentle rocking of the bass instruments, the imitating the tolling of the bells (‘Bimm
slow tolling of bells and ‘sounds of nature’, like Bamm’) before being joined by a women’s
the haunting screech of a night-bird (in the choir for the song proper. The original
oboe). Only gradually does the lyrical Wunderhorn poem has the title ‘Poor
expression of the voice, joined by solo violin Children’s Begging Song’, and the childlike
and horn, begin to draw out a sense of viewpoint of the song is key to Mahler’s setting

25
here, just as in his setting of Das himmlische
Leben (Heavenly Life), originally intended as
the seventh movement of the Third Symphony,
but which Mahler used as the finale of the
Fourth instead. With childlike directness the
song tells of the angels’ singing before moving
to the idea of sin and forgiveness. Its irreverent
tone makes for an unlikely and oblique account
of the sinner’s tears of contrition and the
promise of the eternal love of God, a divergence
between text and setting that was exactly what
confounded critics in Mahler’s lifetime.
6. What love tells me
With the Adagio finale, however, Mahler
reverts to his most sincere and religious tone.
Though this movement is written for
instruments alone, Mahler uses his orchestra
like a choir. The strings at the beginning are
marked sehr ausdrucksvoll gesungen (sung
with great expression). The chorale-like texture,
the register and movement of the individual
parts, all suggest a kind of intense choral
singing, and for a while Mahler confines his
string parts to the range of singers. The effect,
when it comes, of allowing the orchestra to
26
expand beyond the limits of human vocality is
all the more powerful for the restrained
beginning. This is a sublimated choir, one
taken up into supra-human realms by the
instruments of the orchestra, and the
movement as a whole proceeds in this way, by
a succession of expansions rather than by
development or narrative. It enlarges itself
from within, rising up through a series of
ascending plateaux. Undoubtedly, it takes its
model from the slow movements of
Beethoven; the critic William Ritter was so
moved that he claimed it as ‘perhaps the
greatest Adagio written since Beethoven’.
The other echo that contemporary critics might
have heard was Wagner’s Parsifal. The drama
of that opera is played out between the
diatonic chorale and march-like materials of
the Grail knights and a rather tortured
chromaticism associated with the idea of
desire and longing. Mahler’s Adagio similarly
moves between these two types of music, with
the calm assurance of the D major hymn
alternating with passages of searching and
intensely passionate music. Like Parsifal,
Mahler’s music finds its affirmative conclusion
in a containment of that chromatic pain within
the calm assurance of the diatonic – here, a
sustained coda in D major. In doing so, it
draws together a symphony of unprecedented
heterogeneity, which has journeyed from the
raw, elemental world of the first movement
with the anarchic energy of its storm winds,
through the sounds of meadows, forests and
night, to the folk-like vision of heaven. The
finale’s vision of divine love is given in a unity
and purity of tone that would not reappear in
Mahler’s music again until the Eighth
Symphony a decade later.

© Julian Johnson

27 11
TEXTS

aus Neitzsches from Neitzsche’s

Also sprach Zarathustra Also sprach Zarathustra
O Mensch! Gib Acht! O man! Attend!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht? What says the deep midnight?
Ich schlief! I slept!
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht! From a deep dream have I awoken!
Die Welt ist tief! The world is deep!
und tiefer als der Tag gedacht! and deeper than the day has imagined!
O Mensch! Tief, tief ist ihr Weh! O man! Deep, deep is its suffering!
Lust tiefer noch als Herzeleid! Joy deeper still than heart's sorrow!
Weh spricht: Vergeh! Suffering speaks: Perish!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit! But all joy desires eternity!
will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit. desires deep, deep eternity.

Recorded at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London, 8 May 2011

Producer – Misha Donat
Engineer – Jonathan Stokes, Classic Sound Ltd
Design – With Relish (for the Philharmonia Orchestra) and Darren Rumney
Cover image CLebrecht Music & Arts

P2013 Philharmonia Orchestra

C2013 Signum Records

28
Armer Kinder Betterlied
Es sungen drei Engel einen süssen Gesang;
mit Freuden es selig in dem Himmel klang,
sie jauchzten fröhlich auch dabei,
dass Petrus sei von Sünden frei,
er sei von Sünden frei.
Und als der Herr Jesus zu Tische sass,
mit seinen zwölf Jüngern das Abendmahl ass:
Da sprach der Herr Jesus: Was stehst du
denn hier?
Wenn ich dich anseh’, so weinest du mir!
Und sollt’ ich nicht weinen, du gütiger Gott.
(Du sollst ja nicht weinen! Sollst ja nicht
weinen!)
Ich hab’ übertreten die zehn Gebot.
Ich gehe und weine ja bitterlich.
Ach komm und erbarme dich über mich!
Hast du denn übertreten die zehen Gebot,
so fall auf die Kniee und bete zu Gott!
Liebe nur Gott in alle Zeit!
So wirst du erlangen die himmlische Freud’,
die himmlische Freud’, die selige Stadt,
die himmlische Freude war Petro bereit’t,
durch Jesum und allen zur Seligkeit.
auf Des Knaben Wunderhorn
29
Poor Children’s Begging Song
Three angels were singing a sweet song;
with joy it resounded blissfully in heaven,
they rejoiced also
that Peter was free from sin,
he was free from sin.
And when the Lord Jesus sat at table,
with his twelve disciples ate the supper,
There spoke the Lord Jesus: What are you
doing? Whenever I look at you, I find you
weeping!
And should I not weep, you gracious God.
(You should truly not weep! Should truly not
weep!)
I have broken the Ten Commandments.
I go and weep most bitterly.
Ah, come and have mercy on me!
If you have broken the Ten Commandments,
then fall on your knees and pray to God!
Only love God forever!
Thus will you attain heavenly joy,
heavenly joy, the holy city,
heavenly joy was prepared for Peter
by Jesus and for all for their salvation.
from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
 © Benjamin Ealovega

30
 © Benjamin Ealovega
PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA
The Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the
world’s great orchestras. Acknowledged as the
UK’s foremost musical pioneer, with an
extraordinary recording legacy, the Philharmonia
31
leads the field for its quality of playing, and for
its innovative approach to audience
development, residencies, music education
and the use of new technologies in reaching a
global audience. Together with its relationships
with the world’s most sought-after artists, most
importantly its Principal Conductor and Artistic Southbank Centre. During 2013/14 the
Advisor Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Philharmonia Orchestra not only performs more than 35
Orchestra is at the heart of British musical life. concerts at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival
Hall, but also celebrates its 17th year as
Today, the Philharmonia has the greatest claim Resident Orchestra of De Montfort Hall in
of any orchestra to be the UK’s National Leicester and its 13th year as Orchestra in
orchestra. It is committed to presenting the Partnership at The Anvil in Basingstoke; and
same quality, live music making in venues enters the third year of its residencies at the new
throughout the country as it brings to London Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury and the Three
and the great concert halls of the world. In Choirs Festival. The Orchestra’s extensive touring
2013/14 the Orchestra is performing more schedule this season also includes concerts in
than 160 concerts, as well as recording scores Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Germany,
for films, CDs and computer games. Under France and Spain with Esa-Pekka Salonen, a
Esa-Pekka Salonen a series of flagship, two week residency at the Théâtre des Champs-
visionary projects – City of Dreams: Vienna Elysées in Paris performing Poulenc’s Les
1900 -1935 (2009), Bill Viola’s Tristan und Dialogues des Carmelites under Jérémie Rhorer,
Isolde (2010), Infernal Dance: Inside the and tour of China in June with Salonen.
World of Béla Bartók (2011) and Woven
Words, a celebration of Witold Lutosławski’s During its first six decades, the Philharmonia
centenary year – have been critically acclaimed. Orchestra has collaborated with most of the
great classical artists of the 20th century.
For 17 years now the Orchestra’s work has been Conductors associated with the Orchestra
underpinned by its much admired UK and include Furtwängler, Richard Strauss,
International Residency Programme, which Toscanini, Cantelli, Karajan and Giulini. Otto
began in 1995 with the launch of its residencies Klemperer was the first of many outstanding
at the Bedford Corn Exchange and London’s Principal Conductors, and other great names

32
have included Lorin Maazel (Associate innovative programming policy, at the heart of
Principal Conductor), Sir Charles Mackerras which is a commitment to performing and
(Principal Guest Conductor), Riccardo Muti commissioning new works by leading
(Principal Conductor and Music Director), Kurt composers, among them the Artistic Director
Sanderling (Conductor Emeritus) and of its Music of Today series, Unsuk Chin.
Giuseppe Sinopoli (Music Director). As well as
Esa-Pekka Salonen, current titled conductors Since 1945 the Philharmonia Orchestra has
are Christoph von Dohnányi (Honorary commissioned more than 100 new works from
Conductor for Life) and Vladimir Ashkenazy composers including Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir
(Conductor Laureate). Peter Maxwell Davies, Mark-Anthony Turnage
and James MacMillan.
The Philharmonia Orchestra continues to pride
Throughout its history, the Philharmonia
itself on its long-term collaborations with the
Orchestra has been committed to finding new
finest musicians of our day, supporting new as
ways to bring its top quality live performance to
well as established artists. This policy extends
audiences worldwide, and to using new
into the Orchestra itself, where many of the
technologies to achieve this. Many millions of
players have solo or chamber music careers
people since 1945 have enjoyed their first
alongside their work with the Orchestra. The
Philharmonia’s Martin Musical Scholarshipexperience of classical music through a
Philharmonia recording, and in 2013/14
Fund has for many years supported talented
musicians at the start of their careers, audiences can engage with the Orchestra
through computer games, film scores and
including an Orchestral Award, which allows
two young players every year to gain through its YouTube and Vimeo channels
featuring the Orchestra’s award-winning
performing experience within the Orchestra.
documentary films, which have been watched
The Orchestra is also recognised for its by more than a million people worldwide. In

33 11
May 2010 the Orchestra’s digital ‘virtual Signum Records, releasing new live recordings
Philharmonia Orchestra’ project, RE-RITE, won of Philharmonia performances with its key
both the RPS Audience Development and conductors. Since 2003 the Philharmonia has
Creative Communication Awards, and after enjoyed a major partnership with Classic FM,
appearances in London, Leicester and Lisbon, as The Classic FM Orchestra on Tour, as well as
toured to Dortmund in November 2011, Tianjin continuing to broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
in China in April/May 2012, Izmir (Turkey) in
June 2012, and in 2013 to Hamburg and the www.philharmonia.co.uk
Salzburg Festival. RE-RITE, devised with Esa-
Pekka Salonen, secured the Philharmonia’s
position as a digital innovator and its follow-up
audio-visual installation to RE-RITE, Universe of
Sound: The Planets, premièred at the Science
Museum from May to August 2012, receiving
more than 67,000 visitors. It won the 2012
RPS Award for Audiences and Engagement.
Following touring appearances in Birmingham
and Canterbury in 2013 Universe of Sound will
form part of a major new audience development
and education initiative on the South West
Peninsula in 2014 and 2015, alongside RE-
RITE and a new mobile “pop-up” installation.

Recording and broadcasting both continue to

play a significant part in the Orchestra’s
activities, notably through its partnership with

34
LORIN MAAZEL
For over five decades, Lorin Maazel has been
one of the world’s most esteemed and sought-
after conductors. In spring 2011, he completed
his fifth and final season as the inaugural
Music Director of the Palau de les Arts Reina
Sofia in Valencia, Spain. Music Director of the
New York Philharmonic from 2002 to 2009, he
assumed the same post with the Munich
Philharmonic at the start of the 2012/13
season. He is also the founder, Executive and
Artistic Director of a new festival based on his
farm property in Virginia, the Castleton
Festival, launched to exceptional acclaim in
2009 and expanding its activities nationally
and internationally in 2012/13 and beyond.
Maestro Maazel’s 2010/11 season was
highlighted by productions of Aïda and his
own opera 1984 at the Palau de les Arts; two
concerts with the newly formed resident
orchestra of China’s National Center for the
Performing Arts in Beijing; a marathon concert
of all nine Beethoven symphonies in Tokyo; Maestro Maazel is also a highly regarded
and return appearances with the Royal composer, with a wide-ranging catalogue of
35
Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Boston
Symphony Orchestra. He completed a Mahler
cycle in London with the Philharmonia (for the
Mahler centennial year of 2011) in addition to
touring extensively with the Orchestra in
Europe. In September 2010, he marked the
100th anniversary of the première of Mahler’s
Eighth Symphony at the Ruhr Festival
conducting the work with forces numbering in
excess of 1,000 performers. In March 2011,
he took two Castleton Festival Opera
productions to Berkeley, California (Cal
Performances) for the West Coast debut of
the company, with Britten’s Rape of Lucretia
and Albert Herring. In August 2011 he
conducted an all-Beethoven Festival in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil. On 31 December 2011 he
conducted the first New Year’s Concert –
televised live for a world-wide audience – in
Beijing, China. In February 2012 Mr Maazel
embarked on a Scandinavian-American Tour
with the Vienna Philharmonic celebrating their
50-year long collaboration.
works written primarily over the last dozen or
so years. His first opera, 1984, based on
George Orwell’s literary masterpiece, received
its world première at the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden, in May 2005. A revival of 1984
took place at La Scala, Milan in May 2008
and in Valencia, Spain in February & March
2011. A Decca DVD of the original London
production was released in May 2008.
A second-generation American born in Paris,
Lorin Maazel began violin lessons at the age of
five, and conducting lessons at seven. He
studied with Vladimir Bakaleinikoff and
appeared publicly for the first time aged eight.
Between the ages of nine and 15, he
conducted most of the major American
orchestras, including the NBC Symphony at
the invitation of Toscanini. At 17, he entered
the University of Pittsburgh to study languages,
mathematics and philosophy. In 1951 he went
to Italy on a Fulbright Fellowship to further his
studies, and two years later made his
European conducting debut, stepping in for an
ailing conductor at the Massimo Bellini
Theatre in Catania, Italy. He quickly
36
established himself as a major artist,
appearing at Bayreuth in 1960 (the first
American to do so), with the Boston
Symphony in 1961, and at the Salzburg
Festival in 1963.
In 72 years on the podium, Maestro Maazel
has conducted nearly 200 orchestras in no
fewer than 7,000 opera and concert
performances. He has made over 300
recordings, including symphonic cycles/
complete orchestral works of Beethoven,
Brahms, Debussy, Mahler, Schubert,
Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Richard
Strauss, winning ten Grands Prix du Disques.
During his music directorship of the New York
Philharmonic Maestro Maazel conducted the
orchestra on their landmark visit to Pyongyang,
North Korea on 26 February 2008. Maestro
Maazel has been Music Director of the
Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio
(1993–2002), Music Director of the Pittsburgh
Symphony (1988–96); General Manager,
Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the
Vienna State Opera (1982–84) – the first
American to hold that position; Music Director
of The Cleveland Orchestra (1972– 82); and
Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the
Deutsche Oper Berlin (1965–71). His close
association with the Vienna Philharmonic
includes 11 internationally televised New Year’s
Concerts from Vienna.

Alongside his prodigious performing activity,

Maestro Maazel has found time to work with
and nurture young artists, based on his strong
belief in the value of sharing his experience
with the next generation(s) of musicians. He
founded a major competition for young
conductors in 2000, culminating in a final
round at Carnegie Hall two years later, and has
since been an active mentor to many of the
finalists. In 2012 he was President of the
Malko Conductor’s Competition Jury in
Copenhagen. Through his Cháteauville
Foundation, in Castleton, Virginia, he has
created a new Festival and training program
for young artists, bringing together aspiring
singers, instrumentalists and conductors to www.maestromaazel.com
work in an intensive, collaborative environment, www.chateauville.org
with guidance from senior artists and mentors. www.castletonfestival.org

37
PHILHARMONIA VOICES and Christoph von Dohnányi. Highlights of the
AIDAN OLIVER CHORUS MASTER choir’s early history included memorable
performances with the Philharmonia of Britten’s
Philharmonia Voices was formed in 2004 to Death in Venice and Vaughan Williams’s The
work with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Pilgrim’s Progress under Richard Hickox.
international conductors on performances of
the great choral-orchestral repertoire. Since The members of Philharmonia Voices are
then the choir has established itself as one of drawn from some of the finest young singers in
the most exciting professional choruses in the country, most of them either at the start of
London, attracting consistently high praise their professional careers or completing their
from the critics for its collaborations with the conservatoire studies. Working exclusively with
Orchestra in a huge range of repertoire. the Philharmonia Orchestra, the size and
make-up of the choir is able to be tailored
Under Esa-Pekka Salonen the choir has precisely to the varying demands of each
enjoyed several notable triumphs, particularly collaboration by Chorus Master Aidan Oliver,
in 20th-century and contemporary repertoire. providing the Orchestra with a choral
These have included performances of partnership of unique flexibility.
Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex (after which a Sunday
Times review described the choir as .
‘spectacularly good’); Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder,
subsequently released as a critically lauded
live recording; and an acclaimed performance
of Dallapiccola’s neglected one-act opera Il
Prigioniero. Philharmonia Voices have also
worked with conductors including John Wilson,
Kent Nagano, Lorin Maazel, Vladimir Ashkenazy

38
TIFFIN BOYS’ CHOIR (LSO Live/Gergiev and Telarc/Zander), and
SIMON TOYNE DIRECTOR Britten War Requiem (LPO Live/Masur).
Members of the choir feature in DVD releases
Since its foundation in 1957, the Tiffin Boys’ of Carmen, La Bohème, Tosca and Hänsel und
Choir has been one of the few state school Gretel from the Royal Opera House. In
choirs to have been continually at the forefront addition, the choir is heavily involved with the
of the choral music scene in Britain. The choir Sing Up programme for schools and makes
has worked with all the London orchestras and regular exemplar recordings of songs for
performs regularly with the Royal Opera. Recent national distribution.
engagements have included Britten’s War
Requiem (Philharmonia/Maazel), Mahler 3 Tiffin School is state grammar school and
(LSO/Bychkov), Parsifal (Mariinsky/Gergiev), specialist Arts College in Kingston-upon-
as well as the soundtrack for The Hobbit and Thames, described by OFSTED as
The Croods at Abbey Road studios. With altos, ‘exceptional’. The majority of the 1200 boys in
tenors and basses also drawn entirely from the school play a musical instrument, and over
within the school, the choir gives regular 100 boys study Music at GCSE and A Level.
concerts in London and tours regularly, Several members of the choir have gained
including to Australia in 2011. university choral scholarships on leaving Tiffin:
there are ex-Tiffinians currently singing in the
The choir has made recordings of most of the choirs of King’s, St John’s, Trinity and Jesus
orchestral repertoire that includes boys’ choir. Colleges in Cambridge, and Exeter, Magdalen,
Notable releases have included Mahler 8 Oriel and St Edmund Hall Colleges in Oxford.
(EMI/Tennstedt), which was nominated for a
Grammy Award, Puccini Il Trittico, Massenet www.tiffinboyschoir.com
Werther and Puccini Tosca (EMI/Pappano),
Britten Billy Budd (Chandos/Hickox), Mahler 3

39
BBC SYMPHONY CHORUS Prokofiev and Vaughan Williams at the
Barbican, plus Elgar’s The Music Makers at
One of the UK’s finest and most distinctive Fairfield Halls.
amateur choirs, the BBC Symphony Chorus
was founded in 1928. Its early appearances As resident chorus for the BBC Proms, the BBC
included premieres of Bartók’s Cantata Symphony Chorus takes part in a number of
Profana, Stravinsky’s Perséphone and concerts each season, usually including the
Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and this First and Last Nights. Appearances in the 2012
commitment to new music is undiminished Proms included performances of Schoenberg’s
today with premieres and commissions in Gurrelieder with the BBC SO under Jukka-
recent years of works by Sir Peter Maxwell Pekka Saraste (Prom 41) and Walton’s
Davies, Judith Weir, Stephen Montague, Peter Belshazzar’s Feast with the BBC National
Eötvös and Sir John Tavener. Orchestra and Chorus of Wales (Prom 23).

In its performances with the BBC Symphony
Orchestra, the Chorus performs a wide range
of challenging repertoire, most of which is
broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The 2011-12
Barbican season’s concerts included
performances of Tippett’s A Child of Our Time
with Sir Andrew Davis and Stravinsky’s
Symphony of Psalms with David Robertson as
well as appearances at two of the season’s
‘Total Immersion’ events dedicated to
Jonathan Harvey and Arvo Pärt. In its 2012-13
season performances include music by Verdi,
As well as dedicated studio recordings for
Radio 3, the most recent of which was a
programme of contemporary repertoire for
choir, soprano, tenor and cello conducted by
Chorus Director Stephen Jackson, the Chorus
has also made recordings for commercial
record labels, including a selection of choral
works by Joseph Marx, and Delius’s The Song
of the High Hills and Appalachia with the BBC
SO and Sir Andrew Davis.

40
SALLY MATTHEWS Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Bayerische
Rundfunk Orchester, working with conductors
Sally Matthews was the winner of the 1999 including Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Mark Elder,
Kathleen Ferrier Award. She studied with Bernard Haitink, Robin Ticciati, Lorin Maazel,
Cynthia Jolly and Johanna Peters and completed Kent Nagano, Daniel Harding, Seiji Osawa,
the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Antonio Pappano, Michael Tilson Thomas and
Music and Drama in 2000. She was a member Sir Colin Davis.
of The Royal Opera, Covent Garden Young Artist
Programme from 2001 to 2003 and was part As a recitalist, Sally has appeared with pianist
of the BBC New Generation Artists. She Simon Lepper at the Concertgebouw Hall,
currently studies with Paul Farringdon. Amsterdam, La Monnaie, Brussels and regular
appearances at Wigmore Hall, London have
In 2001 she made her Royal Opera debut as included performances with the Nash
Nannetta in Falstaff with Bernard Haitink. Ensemble, as well as solo recitals.
Since then, roles at Covent Garden have
included Pamina in Die Zauberflöte; Fiordiligi
in Così fan tutte; Sifare in Mitridate and Anne
Truelove in The Rake’s Progress.

Sally also sings regularly at Glyndebourne

Festival Opera, Netherlands Opera, and
Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich as well as, in
concert, with all the leading UK orchestras,
and abroad with orchestras including the
Berlin Philharmonic, the San Francisco
Symphony, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, the

41
MICHELLE DEYOUNG
Michelle DeYoung has already established
herself as one of the most exciting artists of her
generation. She continues to be in demand
throughout the world, appearing regularly with
the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony
Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony,
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, The Met
Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London
Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra,
Orchestre de Paris, Vienna Philharmonic, Berliner
Staatskapelle, and the Concertgebouworkest.
She has also performed at the prestigious
festivals of Ravinia, Tanglewood, Saito Kinen,
Edinburgh, and Lucerne.
Equally at home on the opera stage, Ms.
DeYoung has appeared with the Metropolitan
Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Los Angeles
Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Teatra alla
Scala, Bayreuth Festival, Berliner Staatsoper,
Paris Opera, Theater Basel, Opera de Nice and
the Tokyo Opera. Her many roles include
Fricka, Sieglinde and Waltraute in The Ring
42
Cycle; Kundry in Parsifal, Venus in Tannhäuser,
Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde, Eboli in Don
Carlos, Amneris in Aida, Marguerite in Le
Damnation de Faust, Judith in Bluebeard’s
Castle, Dido in Les Troyens, the title role in
Samson et Dalilah, Gertrude in Hamlet,
Jocaste in Oedipus Rex, and the title role in
The Rape of Lucretia. She also created the
role of the Shaman in Tan Dun’s The First
Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera.
A multi-Grammy award winning recording
artist, Ms DeYoung’s impressive discography
includes Kindertotenlieder, Mahler’s Symphony
No. 3, and Das Klagende Lied with Michael
Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco
Symphony (SFS Media), Les Troyens with Sir
Colin Davis and the London Symphony
Orchestra (LSO Live), Mahler Symphony No. 3
with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and
Bernard Haitink (CSO Resound) and with the
Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck
(Challenge Records International); and Das
Lied von der Erde with the Minnesota
Orchestra (Reference Recordings). Her first
solo disc was released on the EMI label.
SARAH CONNOLLY
Born in County Durham, mezzo-soprano Sarah
Connolly studied piano and singing at the
Royal College of Music, of which she is now a
Fellow. She was made CBE in the 2010 New
Year’s Honours List.
Much in demand with the world’s great
orchestras for the lyric mezzo-soprano
repertoire, she works regularly with conductors
such as Bolton, Chailly, Andrew Davis, Colin
Davis, Elder, Harding, Herreweghe, Jurowski,
Maazel, Nézet-Séguin and Rattle. Her many
concert engagements include appearances at
the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Salzburg,
Tanglewood and Three Choirs Festivals and at
the BBC Proms where, in 2009, she was a
memorable guest soloist at the Last Night.
She has recorded prolifically and twice been
In opera, her appearances include Fricka in nominated for a Grammy Award.
Das Rheingold & Die Walküre at Covent
Garden; Purcell’s Dido at La Scala; Komponist
in Ariadne auf Naxos and Clairon in Capriccio
at the Metropolitan Opera; Gluck’s Orfeo at
the Bayerische Staatsoper; the title role in
43
Giulio Cesare and Brangäne in Tristan und
Isolde at the Glyndebourne Festival; Sesto in
La clemenza di Tito at the Festival d’Aix-en-
Provence; Phèdre in Hippolyte et Aricie at the
Paris Opera and at the Glyndebourne Festival
and Nerone in L’Incoronazione di Poppea at
the Maggio Musicale in Florence and at the
Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona.
She has also sung Octavian in Der
Rosenkavalier for Scottish Opera; Komponist
for the Welsh National Opera; the title role in
Maria Stuarda and Roméo in I Capuleti e i
Montecchi for Opera North and Octavian,
Romeo, Sesto, Agrippina, Xerxes, Ariodante,
Ruggiero in Alcina, Didon in Les Troyens and
the title role in Charpentier’s Medea at the
English National Opera.