Season Schedule

About the Music

Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960): Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra
Instrumentation: Scored for solo soprano and string orchestra.
Composed: 2001-02
Duration: 23 minutes

Composer Osvaldo Golijov, the product of an Eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, Argentina, was raised among the eclectic sounds of classical chamber music, Klezmer, liturgical Jewish chant, and the new tango of Astor Piazzolla. After studying piano and composition at the local conservatory, Golijov furthered his formal musical studies in Israel and then Pennsylvania and Tanglewood, Massachusettes, where he worked respectively with avant-garde composers George Crumb and Oliver Knussen. Since then, he has gone on to work intensely with various ensembles and individuals, including the Kronos and St. Lawrence String Quartets, championing Golijov’s “volatile and category-defying style.” The songs performed here, each cast in a different language, were not originally composed as a set; Golijov later rearranged them as “Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra.” Yet they make for a convincing group, united as they are by their achingly expressive vocal lines and impressively evocative orchestral settings, as evident, for example, in the alluring and expansive Night of the Flying Horses and the haunting, agitated rhythmic pulse that underpins How Slow the Wind.

The klezmer-inspired Night of the Flying Horses opens with a Yiddish lullaby Golijov composed for the film The Man Who Cried, which, in the composer’s own words, “explores the fate of Jews and Gypsies in the tragic mid-years of the 20th century, through a love story between a Jewish young woman and a Gypsy young man.” The lullaby metamorphoses into a dense and dark Doina [a slow, lyrical and improvised Romanian chant] featuring the solo viola and “ends in a fast gallop boasting a theme that I stole from my friends of the wild gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks. The theme is presented here in a canonical chase between two orchestral groups.”

Lúa descolorida, a hauntingly beautiful lament about the “colorless moon,” is based on a poem by the great Galician poet Rosalia de Castro (1837-1885) and thus reflects the language of her native Spain. Though Golijov would subsequently incorporate the lament into his groundbreaking opera La Pasión Según San Marcos, the original was scored for voice and piano and championed by soprano Dawn Upshaw. As opposed to the outer songs of the set, the orchestra here functions largely in an accompanimental role, laying a static carpet for the soprano’s soaring lines.

Based on two short poems of Emily Dickinson, How Slow the Wind was Golijov’s response to the death of his friend Mariel Stubrin. As with the other songs of the group, this one is carried as much by the stunning vocal writing as the orchestral landscape. Said Golijov, “I had in mind one of those seconds in life that is frozen in the memory, forever—a sudden death, a single instant in which life turns upside down, different from the experience of death after a long agony.” Among the many noticeable facets of Golijov’s writing are the variety of his orchestral colors and the emotional potency of his vocal lines. All of this is couched within a landscape that moves in and out of a romantically tonal pallet, drawing a unique and satisfying musical life from Dickinson’s powerful poetry.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 4 in G Major (arr. Yoon Jae Lee)
Instrumentation: Scored for flute (plus piccolo), oboe (plus English horn), two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, trumpet, percussion, harp, and strings
Composed: 1899-1900 / arr. 2002
Duration: 56 minutes

Gustav Mahler encapsulated much of what it meant to be a conductor and composer in Vienna at the turn of the century. Jewish by birth, Mahler converted to Christianity to better his chances for professional advancement yet repeatedly faced derision by the anti-Semitic press. A towering figure in the conducting world, he built the Vienna Opera into a world-class institution, yet encountered constant friction among the staff, his singers, and his orchestra, on account of his tireless work ethic and the technical demands of his music. In the face of resistance, Mahler complained, “And it’s on this heap of dead wreckage that I must build a whole flourishing world!” Finally, his audiences and critics were often bewildered by what they encountered. Yet, time has had the final say, for Mahler’s music was soon to become among the most frequently performed and recorded.

Work on the Fourth Symphony lasted about a year, from 1899-1900, the majority of the composing done in the summer months, when Mahler’s conducting duties were aside. The genesis of the Fourth, however, sprang from years earlier, during a period when Mahler had thrown himself into a set of songs, Das Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn), based on German folk texts. Included in the collection was the song “Das himmlische Leben” (“Heavenly Life”), a song about a child’s vision of heaven. Mahler set the text for voice and piano in February of 1892 and orchestrated it the following month but chose not to include the song in the published collection. He then considered it for use in his Third Symphony, before rejecting that idea. It ultimately found its place in the finale of his Fourth Symphony, the work serving as the conclusion of the symphonic cycle that was his first four symphonies: the First, which moved from suffering to triumph, the Second, from death to resurrection, the Third, which contemplated the existence of God and finally the Fourth, which explored life in heaven.

These are admittedly grandiose ideas, and communicating such ideas in sound required tremendous musical control, understanding, and logic. Mahler, who harbored these abilities in spades, believed that to write a symphony was to encapsulate the world—“It must contain everything”—and he gave his all with every symphonic work he composed. Consequently, when the Fourth was complete, he found himself “empty and depressed…life has lost all meaning.” Such was the act of composing for Gustav Mahler.

Mahler’s initial plan for the Fourth was a leviathan that incorporated three autonomous orchestral movements and three songs, that is, a six-movement symphony that would take its place among the equally substantial Second and Third Symphonies. In the end, the composer whittled matters down to the traditional four movements and created a work of traditional length. The Fourth also proved the most “chamber-like” of them all. Thus, while Mahler envisioned the score being performed by an orchestra of perhaps 100 players (or more!), the Fourth has been successfully arranged for a chamber group on more than one occasion, such as that heard tonight by Yoon Jae Lee.

With the iconic opening sleigh bells (which he never used again), the score ushers in a world unlike anything found in Mahler’s earlier symphonies, which run the gamut from funereal to apocalyptic. The Fourth, by contrast, is largely music of childlike wonder, though it is hardly untroubled. Note how Mahler’s tempo headings establish the score’s prevailing calm atmosphere. The music can be broken down as follows:

1. Bedächtig, nicht eilen (deliberate, unhurried): G major. This sonata-form movement is about as Classical as Mahler gets, albeit his themes are lush and romantic, reflecting the height of musical sophistication that was Vienna at the end of the 19th century. As its heading suggests, this movement takes its time unfolding; even the opening violin theme relaxes after its first few notes. There are many glorious moments here, among them the horn solo toward the conclusion. The party now over, the orchestra quickly, albeit charmingly, scampers from the room.
2. In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast (in a leisurely tempo, without hurry): C minor. Though relaxed, Mahler’s Scherzo nevertheless breathes a daemonic air, relying on frequent, grating half-steps and a mistuned violin for added effect. The movement features two Trios, in this case, Ländlers, Viennese dances, similarly in 3/4 time, common among the country folk. The movement, then, takes on the structure A-B-A-C-A.
3. Ruhevoll, poco adagio (calm, somewhat slowly): G major. Constructed as an expansive, double set of variations, this sepulchral movement provides the perfect antidote to the preceding dance of death. Among the most beautiful of Mahler’s slow movements, it is thought to have been inspired by the composer’s mother, a “gentle Jewish girl…who suffered poverty, ill health, and neglect, yet whose loving, forgiving nature remained unaltered…” Only near the end does the orchestra momentarily rise up, full-throated, before calmly settling down once more.
4. Sehr behaglich (very comfortably): G major, ending in E major. This curious movement, the first of the four that Mahler composed, set the tone for those that followed. While Beethoven had first introduced chorus and vocal soloists in the symphonic finale of his 9th Symphony, Mahler’s use of a single voice here broke new ground. Matters end blissfully enough, but there are unsettling intermittent moments, including textural references to slaughter and the fact that the movement ends in the “wrong” key. Typically, Mahlerian, then, is the dichotomy contained within, no doubt a reflection of Mahler’s complex personality. The structure is strophic, that is, determined by the text, and though juxtaposed with brief recollections of former ideas (sleighbells, etc.), it ultimately comes to a fittingly celestial close.

© Marc Moskovitz
marcmoskovitz.org