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Symphony Preview: Fear not Mahler's Third Symphony
Thursday, November 09, 2000 By Andrew Druckenbrod, Post-Gazette Classical Music Critic
With classical music, less is often more.
When it comes to performing, anyway. With programming, audiences can be intimidated by a concert such as this weekend's Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concert of Gustav Mahler's epic Symphony No. 3. The work is among the world's longest symphonies, at about an hour and a half. Its first movement is longer than most Haydn and Mozart symphonies. In addition, it has six movements and uses a huge performing force of orchestra, women's chorus, children's choir and alto.
But there are deep artistic reasons composers went to such great lengths, literally, in certain nonoperatic works. Hearing Mahler's Third Symphony live is a can't-miss opportunity to discover the heights to which classical music can ascend, emotionally and intellectually.
The mammoth works of late Romantic composers such as Mahler, Bruckner and Sibelius represent a high point in the history of symphonic music. A large-scale work like Mahler's Third is where classical music has no peers; the awesome experience of hearing these cathedrals of sounds borders on cathartic.
The sheer size of a Mahler symphony may seem daunting at first, but once you start listening to it, it tends to grab and sustain interest.
"The thing about Mahler's music, the reason people are under its spell, is that he has things going on simultaneously," says Gilbert Kap-lan, an amateur conductor and renowned Mahler expert who lives in New York City. "One part of orchestra is lyrical and dreamy, and another is dark, creating a surrealist effect. People are unclear on what they are feeling."
The Third is such a significant work that music director Mariss Jansons canceled its PSO appearance last February when he fell ill. "It's such a special piece that Mariss felt he wanted to conduct it," an orchestra spokesperson said at the time. Realizing the size of the work might be daunting for some, Jansons decided yesterday to place an intermission after the first movement.
Kaplan's point of view on Mahler is as much that of a fan as of a researcher. He made his fortune as a publisher, then formed the Kaplan Foundation to satisfy a love for Mahler that arose in the '60s when he heard a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 led by Leopold Sto-kowski. The work touched him, and he devoted time to learn how to conduct it, a feat he has accomplished more than 40 times. It is this emotional immediacy of Mahler's music that Kaplan thinks makes such a colossal work digestible.
"I believe that more than any other composer, Mahler's music is about feelings," he says. "He was one of the best composers to put emotion into music. There has got to be a reason that audiences are in tears during his music and walk out disoriented."
A comprehensive look at the natural world leading to a rapturous statement of God, the Third Symphony is an superlative example of Mahler's belief that a symphony should be like the entire world.
He called the work "A Midsummer Morning's Dream," and titled each movement: No. 1, Summer marches in (procession of Bacchus); No. 2, What the flowers of the field tell me; No. 3, What the animals of the forest tell me; No. 4, What man tells me; No. 5, What the angels tell me; No. 6, What love tells me. The work, which premiered in 1902 in Krefeld, Germany, is in two segments, with the massive first movement taking up the first part.
"There is no way to escape the power of this music," Kaplan says. "Many people have listened to Mahler and come out thinking about their own lives -- commitments, death and love."
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Program: Mariss Jansons, conductor; Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano; Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh; Children's Festival Chorus.