BBC Proms 2010 - The Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester [Youth Orchestra] conducted by Herbert Blomstedt [MP4-AAC] (oan)
"Youth orchestras are always heartwarming things to behold, and a pan-European
one such as the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester – founded by Claudio Abbado in
1992 – has the extra fascination of showing how the balance of power is shifting.
Britain’s old dominance of the player-list is long gone: now it’s the Baltic and
Iberian and Eastern European countries that are the emerging powerhouses. The
real shock was seeing just how female-dominated the orchestra is, with hardly a
male face among the violins."
Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester [Youth Orchestra]
Paul Hindemith (1895–1963)
Symphony ‘Mathis der Maler’ (1933–4)
1 Engelkonzert [Angel Concert]
2 Grablegung [Entombment]
3 Versuchung des Heiligen Antonius [Temptation of St Anthony]
Hindemith’s Symphony ‘Mathis der Maler’ (‘Mathis the Painter’) is often said to
have been extracted from his opera of the same name. Certainly the same music
appears in both, but the symphony was the earlier work. In 1933, the year of the
Nazi seizure of power, Hindemith accepted the suggestion of his publisher Willy
Strecker that he should compose an opera based on the life of the Renaissance
painter Matthias Grünewald (c1475/80–1528), whose real name was Mathis
Gothart Nithart. Grünewald’s masterpiece is the set of paintings executed at the
beginning of the 16th century on the altar for the hospital of the monastery at
Isenheim in Alsace. Now preserved in Colmar, near Strasbourg, this Isenheim
altar-piece is well known in Germany as one of the supreme treasures of late
German medieval art.
Hindemith, writing his own libretto, decided to cast his opera Mathis der Maler in
seven tableaux based on the Isenheim paintings, treating them as allegories of the
course of Mathis’s career and of the events of his time, a turbulent era of religious
strife. In the character of Mathis, Hindemith created a figure who, as he wrote, is
‘the embodiment of problems, wishes and doubts which have occupied the minds
of all serious artists from remotest times’. The parallels with Hindemith’s own
position, during Germany’s contemporary political turmoil, were unmistakable.
Even before he began the libretto, however, he started to compose some of the
music, fulfilling a commission from Wilhelm Furtwängler for the Berlin Philharmonic.
First, he composed a piece inspired by Grünewald’s painting of a concert of angels
(Engelkonzert), intended to become the opera’s prelude (eventually it also, with
voices added, became the basis of the Sixth Tableau). He then wrote a short slow
movement, evoking Grünewald’s picture of the Entombment of Christ
(Grablegung). After some hesitation, Hindemith rounded off his commission with a
large-scale finale – the long and virtuosic depiction of the Temptation of St Anthony
which completes his symphonic triptych.
Furtwängler’s world premiere of this ‘Mathis der Maler’ Symphony in Berlin on 12
March 1934 was a resounding public and critical success. Shortly afterwards,
however, the Nazi authorities began to impose a ban on performances of
Hindemith’s music, and the press began a hate-campaign against him.
Furtwängler, who wanted the first production of the Mathis opera for Berlin,
published a newspaper article in Hindemith’s defence, but only made matters
worse. He himself was dismissed from his official posts until he made a humiliating
capitulation to the authorities, while Dr Goebbels personally attacked Hindemith at
Nazi party rallies. By the end of 1935 Hindemith’s music was virtually unheard in
his native land; he was eventually forced into exile in Switzerland, where the Mathis
opera was finally premiered in 1938.
The affair had drawn widespread attention and enhanced Hindemith’s international
standing. The ‘Mathis’ Symphony was widely performed; even today it remains one
of his most admired creations, its language more dramatic and lyrically appealing
than the somewhat utilitarian neo-Classicism of some of his 1920s works. In the
symphony his considerable polyphonic skill combines with a simplified and more
stable harmonic sense, a melodic style often vocal or song-like, brilliant
instrumentation, and an enhanced conception of the imaginative ‘interior space’
that the orchestra can create.
These qualities are manifest in the serene and luminous G major opening of the
first movement, the Engelkonzert. Hindemith’s enhanced interest in plainsong, and
old German folk song comes to the fore as the trombones intone the melody Es
sungen drei Engel ein süssen Gesang (‘Three Angels sang a Sweet Song’), in D
flat: the entire symphony is built around the opposing tonal poles of G and C
sharp/D flat. After this slow introduction the movement becomes a joyous, almost
child-like Allegro on three principal themes, subjected to an ebullient and
resourceful contrapuntal development. As events progress, the majestic tune of Es
sungen drei Engel is combined with the dancing Allegro themes at the movement’s
climax, giving way to a coda of resplendent celestial hilarity, concluding in G.
The Grablegung slow movement is gravely elegiac, a kind of funereal nocturne
which established the basic pattern for several of Hindemith’s later symphonic
Adagios. (In the opera it follows the death of Mathis’s beloved Regina, the daughter
of the leader of the peasants; and it returns, in the final scene, as the disillusioned
painter renounces his art.) A solemn theme in slow march rhythm, for massed
strings and winds, is succeeded by a series of desolately beautiful woodwind solos.
The slow march returns and builds to an austere climax; the woodwind solos round
the movement off in a spirit of personal lament, in C sharp.
The finale is inscribed Ubi eras bone Jhesu / ubi eras, quare non affuisti / ut
sanares vulnera mea? (‘Good Jesus where wert thou, wherefore wert thou not
there to heal my wounds?’). Grünewald’s painting of the Temptation of St Anthony
shows the saint assailed and tortured by fantastic, misshapen creatures. In the
opera this is re-enacted with Mathis as Anthony and the other characters as his
demonic tormentors.
After an anguished, recitative-like introduction, the main part of the movement is a
harried Allegro in C sharp minor, driven by obsessive ostinato rhythms, in several
dramatic episodes. A prominent, aggressive descending four-note phrase
transcribes the demons’ cry ‘Wir plagen dich’ (‘We torment you!’). A brief, warmly
lyrical Adagio for strings (the music of the beggar-maid) brings some assuagement,
but its allure becomes feverish, and the Allegro assault begins once more.
Eventually, however, a vigorous fugato in the strings reveals itself as the
accompaniment to the Gregorian chant Lauda Sion salvatorem (‘Praise thy
saviour, O Sion’). Here Hindemith alludes to another Grünewald painting, showing
St Anthony succoured in the desert by St Paul the Hermit: in the opera Cardinal
Albrecht, Mathis’s patron and comforter, takes on the role of Paul. At last the music
assumes clarity and resolution. With the full brass unfolding exultant Alleluias, the
symphony ends in the unshakable D flat major of the angels’ song.
Calum MacDonald is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and Editor of Tempo. As
Malcolm MacDonald he has written books on Brahms, John Foulds, Havergal
Brian, Schoenberg and Varèse
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (1883–5)
1 Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht [On my love’s wedding day]
2 Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld [This morning I walked across the meadow]
3 Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer [I have a glowing knife]
4 Die zwei blauen Augen [My love’s two blue eyes]
Mahler is sometimes described as a ‘song-symphonist’. His experiences as a
composer of Lieder left their mark on each of his numbered symphonies. Several
of the symphonies contain song-movements: the finale of the Fourth Symphony,
‘Das himmlische Leben’ (The Heavenly Life), actually started life as an
independent song. But there are many other passages where the spirit of the Lied
is invoked, even though no voices are heard. The middle movement of the
unfinished 10th Symphony, entitled ‘Purgatorio’, is song-like in form and character
– its starting point is a figure from the eerie ‘Das irdische Leben’ (The Earthly Life)
from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn songs. And what is the long trombone solo
near the start of the Third Symphony if not an elemental ‘song without words’?
The Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (‘Songs of a Wayfaring Lad’), composed
between 1883 and 1885, left a particularly strong imprint on the roughly
contemporary First Symphony. The first verse of the second song, ‘Ging heut’
morgen über’s Feld’, forms the main theme of that symphony’s first movement –
and a fair amount of its continuation; while the final verse of the fourth song
(beginning ‘Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum’ – ‘Upon the road there stands a
linden tree’) reappears as the Trio section of the First Symphony’s sinister Funeral
March. This connection emphasises something the casual reader of the Lieder
eines fahrenden Gesellen texts might miss: that the linden tree under which the
wandering boy finds peace is a symbol of death. In the song, we have just a couple
of bars of the opening funereal tune to cloud the quiet ecstasy of the singer’s final
words: ‘All was well again! All! All! Love and sorrow, the world and dreams!’ That
opposition – warm, soothing hope one moment, cold emptiness the next – is typical
of Mahler.
But, however fascinating it may be to compare Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
and the First Symphony, each work is an independent creation. In fact, it’s possible
to view the song-cycle as a kind of symphony in its own right. In terms of tempo,
the four songs complement each other like the movements of a symphony: slowish;
moderately fast; very fast; slow and march-like. There’s also a continuously
evolving tonal pattern, as in Symphonies Nos. 2, 5 and 7: D minor–G minor; D
major–F sharp major; D minor–E flat minor; E minor–
F major/minor.
In the symphonies, such ‘progressive’ schemes are often wedded to a kind of
musical narrative, but the story is rarely as explicit as it is here. A young man loses
the girl he loves to another man. He tries to console himself with the beauties of
nature, but inside his pain burns as before. At last he finds consolation in the
thought of death. There are clear parallels with one of the greatest song-cycles of
them all: Schubert’s Winterreise. In both a man loses love and the promise of
happiness and walks away, towards oblivion. There’s a linden tree in Schubert’s
cycle too, the subject of one of his best-loved songs. But where, in Schubert, the
winter landscape reflects the frozen grief of the wanderer, Mahler’s is clearly a
spring journey: nature bursts into life and colour around the wayfaring lad – and yet
he cannot respond to it. Mahler’s score paints this sad irony with music of exquisite
beauty and pathos. We don’t need to know anything about Mahler’s life at this time
to sense that he identifies with the young hero of the poems. But the score of this
final song is quite specific: Ohne Sentimentalität – ‘Without sentimentality’. There’s
no room here for self-pity.
General
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