We are delighted to welcome back cellist Lynn Harrell for these concerts, for his fourth appearance with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Harrell's previous visits were in 1987(Schumann's Cello Concerto), 1998 ( Bloch's Schelomo and Tchaikovsky's Pezzo Capriccioso), and 2000 (Elgar's Cello Concerto).  At these concerts, he performs a rarely-heard concerto by the Irish-American composer Victor Herbert.  The other work on this program continues the "Mahler cycle" begun with Maestro DeMain's first concert in 1994. Mahler's ninth symphony is perhaps the most profound of his works--a troubled and eventually serene farewell to life itself.
 

Victor Herbert (1859-1924)
Concerto No. 2 for Cello and Orchestra in E Minor, Op.30

Herbert's second cello concerto was composed in 1893-1894, and he played the solo part in the premiere, with the New York Philharmonic Society on March 9, 1894. This is our first performance of the work. Duration 21:00.

Though his music is heard all too infrequently today, Victor Herbert was one of the most prominent musicians in turn-of-the-century America. Herbert was born in Dublin, and remained fiercely proud of his Irish heritage throughout his life. Trained in Germany, Herbert showed phenomenal talent early on, as both cellist and composer, and while still in his early twenties, appeared as soloist in two of his own large works for cello and orchestra. Herbert married soprano Therese Forster in 1886, and Therese was soon afterwards offered a contract at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, a job offer that included a position in the orchestra for Victor.

As soon as the Herberts arrived in New York, Victor made every effort to become a conspicuous part of the city's musical life. Within a few months, in January of 1887, he appeared with the New York Philharmonic, as cello soloist in his own Suite, op.3. By the end of the 1880s, he had founded both the New York String Quartet and the highly successful Victor Herbert Orchestra. His skills as a conductor were increasingly in demand as well, and in 1893, he became director of New York's 22nd Regiment Band, a virtuoso ensemble which was rivaled by only a few bands in the country and surpassed only by the Sousa Band. In succeeding years, he turned to operetta and produced several of the most successful Broadway shows of the very early 20th century, including Babes in Toyland, and the wildly successful Naughty Marietta. Herbert loved the spotlight, and did everything he could to bolster and protect his public reputation. One of the more colorful episodes from his career was a libel suit he brought against a New York critic in 1901. This critic had not only said nasty things about Herbert's talent, he had also implied that much of the music in Herbert's operettas was cribbed from other composers. The jury awarded Herbert substantial damages in the amount of $15,158.40--a sum which must have helped to ease his hurt feelings!

Though the last two decades of his life were largely spent in the theater, Herbert in the 1890s was known first and foremost as one of the great cellists of the day. His second cello concerto was written for a performance in New York in 1894. The idea of the cello as a solo instrument was apparently fairly new in musically conservative New York--of the reviewers wrote "...it is a pity that God did not bless him with a violin." One critic that was enthusiastic was Antonin Dvorák. Dvorák was in New York, as Director of the National Conservatory of Music, where he and Herbert were colleagues. The Herbert concerto was apparently the primary inspiration for Dvorak's own cello concerto (1895)-- Dvorák's last completed orchestral work and one of his supreme masterworks.

Herbert's Cello Concerto No.2 is a fine work in its own right. A traditional three-movement concerto in the German Romantic mold, it is notable for the prominent role given to the orchestra and for its careful thematic development. The first movement (Allegro impetuoso) is in a somewhat abbreviated sonata form, with two bold main ideas, stated by the orchestra and soloist at the outset. The cello and the orchestra serve as more or less equal partners in the development that ensues. At the end, there is no full closure, but instead a gradual slowing and a lessening of tension that bridges directly to the second movement (Andante tranquillo). Here, the main theme is a flowing lyrical line sung by the cello above gently pulsing strings. The central section is more agitated, but after a short cadenza, the main idea returns, now played by the strings with quiet commentary from the cello. The finale (Allegro) begins with a forceful orchestral statement and a solo answer. There is a contrasting theme, but the main idea dominates, until a brief solo cadenza. All conventional enough, but the ending is an inventive reintepretation of the main ideas of the first and second movements, combined together and transformed into a blazing coda.
 

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No.9 in D Major

Mahler's ninth symphony, his last completed score, was written between 1908 and 1910. Bruno Walter conducted the first performance, on June 26, 1912. This is our fist performance of the complete symphony, though the Madison Symphony Orchestra played the Rondo-Burleske movement at a concert in 1981. Duration 85:00.

No work by Mahler is surrounded by more mystique than his ninth symphony, a work widely understood as his farewell to life. Some of this understanding originates with the posthumous mythmaking of his wife Alma, but it is clear that his own mortality was very much on Mahler's mind in this period. In 1907, the he suffered the three "hammer blows" supposedly foretold in his sixth symphony of 1905. Summer retreats at his country home in Mairnegg had been a cherished time for composition and outdoor life, but the summer of 1907 turned into a nightmare. In June, his daughters caught scarlet fever, and one of them, his beloved Maria, died on July 7. Shortly afterwards, the doctor who arrived to treat the exhausted Alma examined Mahler himself and diagnosed a serious heart condition. Mahler would later refer to this diagnosis as his "death sentence." The third blow fell in August, when he was obliged to resign as director of the Vienna Court Opera, apparently the victim of the Hofoper's musical politics and anti-Semitism.

Part of the ninth's mystique is the number itself. Beethoven's monumental ninth symphony was one of the defining works of the Romantic era, and composing more than nine symphonies seems to have been considered the ultimate act of hubris among Romantic composers. By the reckoning of Mahler's time, Schubert died shortly after completing his ninth, and Mahler was well aware that Bruckner had died in 1896, while trying desperately to finish the finale of his ninth symphony, a work that contains a movement titled "the farewell to life." After the relatively painless composition of his Symphony No.8, Mahler seems to have approached the composition of his own ninth with a bit of superstitious dread. He did not assign a number to his 1909 "song-symphony" Das Lied von der Erde--in reality his ninth completed symphony. According to Alma, he felt that having this unacknowledged ninth symphony afforded a certain degree of protection from the jinx, remarking about the Symphony No.9 that "of course, it's really the tenth. She recalled that Mahler truly felt safe from the curse when he was at work on his Symphony No.10. In the end, however, it was the composition of this work that was cut short by Mahler's death on May 18, 1911.

The ninth is part of Mahler's closely interwoven final trilogy: Das Lied von der Erde, Symphony No.9, and the unfinished tenth. These are the final stages of a quarter century of evolution in his symphonic style. His first four symphonies are all to some extent programmatic works based on vocal models--particularly Mahler's own settings of folk-poetry from Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The boy's magic horn"). On the surface, the fifth through seventh symphonies are much more severe works of absolute, purely instrumental music. The massive eighth, with its exuberantly vocal conception, looks back to the earlier symphonies in character. The last three works, composed after the great "hammer blows" of 1907, are closely interconnected by musical quotations, continuous development of other, broader musical ideas, and a general tone of "leave-taking."

Mahler felt his works very personally, and in some sense the symphonies constitute his autobiography. If so, the ninth is a fitting final chapter: a musical arch that moves from the titanic struggle of the first movement, though a mischievous interlude in the second, and the grotesque satire of the third, to a finale filled with nostalgia and peaceful acceptance. His young admirer Alban Berg wrote of the opening movement: "It is the culmination of everything on earth and in dreams, with ever more intense eruptions following the most gentle passages, and of course this intensity is strongest in the horrible moment where death becomes a certainty, where, in the middle of the deepest, most poignant longing for life, death makes itself known ‘with the greatest violence.’ Against that, there is no resistance." His student Bruno Walter described the ending as "...a peaceful farewell; with the conclusion, the clouds dissolve in the blue of heaven." Leonard Bernstein, in his "Norton Lectures" at Harvard (1973) argued that the offbeat rhythm of the opening bars of the ninth was Mahler's musical portrait of his own failing heart. In a broader sense Bernstein saw the ninth as a musical prophesy of the calamities and mass death of the 20th century. These sentiments were echoed a decade later by science writer Lewis Thomas in his 1983 essay "Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony," where Mahler's musical reflections on personal death sparks contemplation of mass, impersonal death by nuclear war.

The opening movement (Andante comodo) begins peacefully with harp, horn and strings, though the offbeat rhythm of the accompaniment interjects a subtle note of anxiety. This main theme will reappear in many guises in the course of this long movement. The mood gradually shifts as the texture thickens and the theme reemerges in a glorious statement by the strings. This idea is succeeded by a long and mysterious "funeral march" and new, more sentimental music which soon battles with more strident statements from the brass. A mood of profound uneasiness continues even after the "battle" ends with an abrupt trombone smear. This passage evolves into a second, much more extended march. The long coda features a series of the kind of sublime chamber-music episodes that are heard throughout Mahler's symphonies. In the end, it closes in quiet tranquility.

The two central movements are shorter (at least in comparison to the titanic opening and finale) and explore two very different moods. Mahler's biographer Constantin Floros called the second movement "the summa of the Mahlerian dance modes. Dances of every character developed by Mahler...are represented here: the leisurely ländler, the two types of waltz, and the slow ländler." The mood is largely playful, and Mahler indulges in a number of quotations of German folk-tunes that would have been familiar to his audience. He describes the first ländler as "leisurely, clumsy, heavy-footed, and coarse," and there is also a distinctive barn-dance feel to the more agitated waltz that follows. The final main idea is a second, more amiable ländler. In the remainder of the movement, he combines and recapitulates these ideas in ingenious ways until it ends with a humorous gesture from piccolo and contrabassoon.

Mahler inscribed the Rondo-Burleske "to my brothers in Apollo"--an ironic reference to the god of music--and the whole movement seems to be an elaborate nose-thumbing at the musical establishment. The movement is fiercely contrapuntal, with an opening section that weaves together a series of jagged themes in sometimes startling combinations. The tunes that emerge from this are deliberately trivial, including a sly reference to Lehar's The Merry Widow, but the overall effect is overwhelmingly intense. He breaks this intensity in the middle with a passage marked "with great feeling"--a lovely transformation of one of the opening themes by the solo trumpet and strings. The mood of the opening intrudes periodically on this peaceful music, and in the end the the ferocious mood of the opening triumphantly returns. The movement ends with an almost frantic coda.

The final movement (Adagio) begins with an impassioned recitative from the violins, and they then introduce the main theme, a broad, almost hymnlike melody. This idea reaches a sublime peak and is then interrupted by a long episode of questing, anxious music. The main theme returns with even greater warmth, and there are subtle reminiscences of ideas from earlier movements as Mahler works in an unhurried way towards a grand central climax--the only section of the movement to involve the full orchestra. After this stirring passage--a moment of triumphant acceptance?--the remainder of the movement is a gradual and peaceful decrescendo. In the midst of this calm, the violins make a pointed reference to a line from his 1905 song-cycle Kindertotenlieder ("Songs on the Death of Children"), the music that sets the line "the day is so lovely on those heights." The movement closes with a gentle and serene dying away.
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program notes ©2007 by J. Michael Allsen