CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The Met Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 3:00 PM

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Stephanie Blythe, Mezzo-Soprano

ELGAR Sea Pictures, Op. 37

MAHLER Symphony No. 5

Program is approximately 1 hour, 30 minutes, including one intermission

Program Notes:

EDWARD ELGAR (1857–1934)
Sea Pictures

Elgar’s irresistibly charming Sea Pictures were completed in 1899, shortly after the premiere of the composer’s first masterpiece, the orchestral “Enigma” Variations. In retrospect, the success of this modest, aquatic-themed song cycle seems surprising. Stripped to its bare essentials, the piece comprises five relatively brief settings of verse, written by five different, mostly unknown poets, wed to music rapidly scored by a composer who had previously displayed no outstanding gift for song. From the first notes of the gently swelling “Sea Slumber Song,” however, these are unmistakably first-rate compositions, marked by a simple melodic elegance and clever, evocative orchestration. Elgar also displays his talent for organically fusing orchestra and voice—an ability that the composer would later showcase in his extensive output of oratorios.

The poems used in Sea Pictures adhere to the oceanic theme to varying degrees, from the first setting, a soothing lullaby sung by the sea herself, to “In Haven (Capri),” a vignette of anonymous love that uses the water simply as landscape and metaphor. Likewise, Elgar’s musical language varies broadly, from the patrician pageantry of “Sabbath Morning at Sea,” to the bucolic, sauntering flexibility of “Where Corals Lie,” so reminiscent of Schubert’s early masterpiece “Gretchen am Spinnrade” in its rhythmic ebb and flow. Only in the final song, “The Swimmer,” does Elgar attempt a glimpse of the dramatic power of waves and wind, long the most common oceanic attribute seized upon by composers who attempt to depict the mercurial majesty of the sea. One last orchestral flourish suggests the salty spray of breakers crashing on the shore, sparkling in the sun.


GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911)
Symphony No. 5

With his Fifth Symphony, Mahler set out to free his music from the bonds of extramusical narrative content. After his four previous symphonies, all of which possessed programmatic elements and either included sung text (Nos. 2, 3, and 4) or contained overt allusions to music and verse previously used in a song cycle (No. 1), the Fifth is a long stride toward the Romantic concept of absolute music—music that attempts to convey nothing but itself. Mahler struggled with these two opposed paradigms of composition throughout his career, and after the completion of the Fifth, he worried about the reception of his vast, turbulent score without the aid of a program to help the audience make sense of it all. In a letter sent to his wife, Alma, while preparing for the symphony’s premiere in 1904, Mahler wrote: “And the public— heavens!—how should they react to this chaos, which is constantly giving birth to new worlds and promptly destroying them again? What should they make of these primeval noises, this rushing, roaring, raging sea, these dancing stars, these ebbing, shimmering, gleaming waves?”

Mahler’s “primeval noises” are broken into five movements, which the composer grouped more broadly into three basic segments, with the Scherzo standing alone in the middle and the two movements on either side acting together to form one section each. From the outset, musical themes constantly recur and are transformed, creating a sense of unity and fluid forward motion despite the drastic differences in style and mood between the three sections. The mournful theme following the trumpet fanfare in the opening funeral march also permeates the second movement; the main melody from the Adagietto is sped up and used as a theme in the final movement; the brass chorale from the second movement makes a curtain call in the coda of the finale, just before the very end. Despite the movements’ thematic interdependence, however, this symphony is ultimately a work of contrast, of darkness and light.

That Mahler opens the symphony with a funeralmarch is not particularly shocking. Funeral marches, in style if not always in name, are so abundant in Mahler’s work that they could be considered a morbid trademark. Neither is it surprising autobiographically. In February 1901, the year Mahler began work on the Fifth, he suffered an internal abdominal hemorrhage, lost a third of his blood, and nearly died. It would not be a stretch to imagine that the composer had his own mortality in mind for some time afterward. This particular funeral march, introduced by a trumpet fanfare that stands as one of the most unmistakable symphonic openings in music history, is a savage beast, merciless in its pessimism. The militant atmosphere present from the outset is interrupted only by a recurring, anguished dirge in the strings.

The second movement, very similar in atmosphere and outlook, is even more manic, sometimes surging forward with violent brass and pounding timpani, sometimes softly weeping with strings and woodwinds. Just before the end, the music suddenly veers into the major mode, and we get a glimpse of the triumphant brass chorale that will eventually bring the symphony to a close. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the chorale is gone, dissolving into a formless mass of wispy instrumental lines that haltingly bring the movement, and the first part of the symphony, to a close.

The Scherzo at the heart of the Fifth is a very strange creation, and Mahler himself realized that it could be easily misunderstood. In the same letter previously mentioned, he wrote to Alma: “That scherzo is an accursed movement! It will have a long tale of woe! For the next 50 years conductors will take it too fast and make nonsense of it.” It belongs neither to the despair that has preceded it nor to the tranquility and triumph that will follow—it seems instead like a fever dream, a hallucinogenic journey through a world apart from our own. Lurching in triple time, it sounds like something between a deranged waltz and a whirling carnival ride. It stops and starts, sputters and roars, and one never knows whether to be excited or alarmed. Virtuosic in the extreme, it contains some of Mahler’s most brilliant flights of orchestral fancy, scintillating with color and throbbing with life.

What follows is something entirely different. Th eAdagietto, at first inspection, would appear to becompletely out of place—a page from a different piece of music that fell into this score by mistake. In the midst of a symphony for massive orchestra, it calls only for strings and harp. Situated between two enormously long movements, it comes and goes in just 103 measures. Most of all, amid furor and frenzy, the Adagietto jolts the listener with quiet, understated elegance. The surreal, trance-inducing sense of the otherworldly achieved here is matched in only two other places in Mahler’s work: the “Urlicht” movement of the Second Symphony, and the closing pages of the Ninth. So, how to explain this brief, sheltering tranquility in the eye of such a storm? To understand the Adagietto, one must remember Alma. The young, gorgeous, and musically talented Alma Schindler, whom Mahler married in 1902 while in the midst of writing the Fifth, became the composer’s muse and occasional assistant, even helping with the orchestration and copying of the Fifth Symphony while on retreat at Mahler’s villa in Maernigg, Austria, during their first summer together in 1902. And if, against Mahler’s stated desire to the contrary, there are any nonmusical messages to be found in this symphony, the influence of the composer’s feelings for his new wife are the best place to look. Gilbert Kaplan— businessman, amateur conductor, and Mahler scholar—has assembled a convincing argument that the Adagietto, which was written during the short, secretive courtship and engagement between 41- year-old Gustav and 22-year-old Alma, was intended by the composer as a musical love letter to his new bride. Into Mahler’s taxing, tempestuous life came the beauty and charm of Alma; into the Fifth Symphony came the Adagietto.

Emerging without pause from the barely audible final chord of the Adagietto comes a single note for principal horn, suddenly breaking the trance like a child’s finger popping a bubble. Slowly gaining speed and coalescing from snippets of sound and motivic fragments, the Rondo–Finale eventually develops into a high-spirited, light-hearted romp, finally twisting the symphony a full 180 degrees from where it began. This movement exults, laughing at all the preceding struggle and angst. In its masterfully inventive use of complex counterpoint, it also laughs at Mahler’s critics, who had long accused him of being unable to master true polyphony. Finally, rising up from racing 16th-notes and frolicking strings, the victorious brass chorale from the second movement again bursts forth, this time in its full glory. As if realizing that to end with such pomp would be to take itself too seriously, the chorale dies away and the symphony races to a close with a final, boisterous yelp.

—Jay Goodwin

More Information:

Based on a selection of poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and others, Elgar’s dark sea songs fit perfectly with the powerful and deep singing of Stephanie Blythe. Then James Levine and the orchestra journey through the tumultuous universe of Mahler’s Fifth, a symphony so vast in its emotions that to hear it even once can be a transforming experience.

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
JAMES LEVINE

James Levine conducts four operas at the Metropolitan Opera in 2009–2010, his 39th season there, including opening night’s Tosca premiere (the work with which he made his Met debut in 1971), the new production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and revivals of Simon Boccanegra and Lulu. He and the MET Orchestra are heard in two concerts at Carnegie Hall this season (the soloists are Stephanie Blythe and Diana Damrau), while Pierre Boulez conducts the third date in the subscription series (with Deborah Polaski in May); Levine and the MET Chamber Ensemble give two performances in Weill and Zankel halls, featuring the music of Boulez, Mozart, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Strauss. (Also in Zankel Hall, he participates in a series of master classes for the Marilyn Horne Foundation next month.)

Maestro Levine leads the Boston Symphony in two programs at Carnegie Hall in coming months with soloists Pierre-Laurent Aimard (in music of Ravel and Carter) and Christine Brewer, Stephanie Blythe, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Shenyang, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (in Mendelssohn’s Elijah). His sixth season as Music Director of the BSO began on September 23 and includes world premieres of commissions from Peter Lieberson, John Harbison, and JohnWilliams; the US premiere of Carter’s Flute Concerto; his first performances with the BSO of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony; and a special Pension Fund concert in February that features music of “all four Strausses”: waltzes and polkas of Johann Sr., Jr., and Josef, as well as Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote. The BSO recently released the first five in a new series of recordings made in live performances in Symphony Hall, includingMahler’s Sixth Symphony, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé,William Bolcom’s Eighth Symphony and “Lyric Concerto,” Brahms’s German Requiem, and a two-CD collection of Mozart symphonies.

James Levine makes his debut in March with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Mahler’s Third Symphony in the German capital (as well as a gala four-hand piano evening with that orchestra’s Artistic Director, Daniel Barenboim, and Dorothea Röschmann, Waltraud Meier, Matthew Polenzani, and René Pape, for the benefit of the Deutsche Staatsoper’s imminent renovation), and will help celebrate Cincinnati Opera’s 90th Anniversary in June, leading a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in his hometown before returning to the BSO’s Tanglewood Festival (July 9–August 4).


THE MET ORCHESTRA

The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is regarded as one of the world’s finest orchestras. From the time of the company’s inception in 1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert performances and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish and style.

The MET Orchestra maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals during its 32-week New York season, when the company performs seven times a week in repertory that normally encompasses approximately 27 operas.

Arturo Toscanini conducted almost 500 performances at the Met, and Gustav Mahler, during the few years he was in New York, conducted 54 Met performances. More recently, many of the world’s great conductors have led the orchestra: Walter, Beecham, Reiner, Mitropoulos, Kempe, Szell, Böhm, Solti, Maazel, Bernstein, Mehta, Abbado, Karajan, Dohnányi, Haitink, Tennstedt, Ozawa, Gergiev, and Barenboim. Carlos Kleiber’s only US opera performances were with the MET Orchestra.

In addition to its opera schedule, the orchestra has a distinguished history of concert performances. Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with the MET Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who appeared with the orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moritz Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler. Since the orchestra resumed symphonic concerts in 1991, instrumental soloists have included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, and Evgeny Kissin, and the group has performed four world premieres: Babbitt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998), Bolcom’s Symphony No. 7 (2002), Shen’s Legend (2002), and Wuorinen’s Theologoumenon (2007).

The orchestra’s high standing led to its first commercial recordings in nearly 20 years: Wagner’s complete Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine. Recorded by Deutsche Grammophon over a period of three years, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung were winners of an unprecedented three consecutive Grammy Awards in 1989, 1990, and 1991 for Best Opera Recording. Other recordings under Maestro Levine include L’elisir d’amore, Idomeneo, Le nozze di Figaro, Der fliegende Holländer, Parsifal, Erwartung, Manon Lescaut, and seven Verdi operas. Maestro Levine has also led the orchestra for recordings of Wagner overtures, Verdi ballet music, an all-Berg disc with Renée Fleming, and aria albums with Bryn Terfel, Kathleen Battle, and Ms. Fleming. The orchestra’s first symphonic recordings are pairings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps; Beethoven’s “Eroica” with Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphonies; and Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote and Tod und Verklärung.

In spring 1991 the orchestra, under the leadership of Maestro Levine, began concert touring. They have since traveled across the US and to Europe (including their debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2002), as well as annually to Carnegie Hall. In spring 2006 the company returned to Japan for its fifth tour there in 18 years.

Stephanie Blythe, Mezzo-Soprano
STEPHANIE BLYTHE

Stephanie Blythe has sung in many of the world’s leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera; Seattle Opera; Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and l’Opéra National de Paris. This season Ms. Blythe makes her house debut at the San Francisco Opera as Azucena in Il trovatore, returns to the Metropolitan Opera singing the three leading mezzo-soprano roles in Il trittico (La Frugola in Il tabarro, La Principessa in Suor Angelica, and Zita in Gianni Schicchi), to Covent Garden as Baba the Turk in The Rake’s Progress, and to the Seattle Opera as Mistress Quickly in Falstaff. In addition to today’s concert, she also appears at Carnegie Hall with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Since making her Met debut in 1995, Ms. Blythe has appeared with the company in more than 125 performances, including Orfeo in Orfeo ed Euridice, Ježibaba in Rusalka, Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera, Fricka in Die Walküre, Cornelia in Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Mother Marie in Dialogues des Carmélites, Jocasta in Oedipus rex, Eduige in Rodelinda, Mistress Quickly, and Baba the Turk. She is a 1997 graduate of the company’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.

Ms. Blythe has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras, includingthe New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and The Philadelphia Orchestra. A frequent recitalist, she has appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Art Song Festival, and Ann Arbor’s University Musical Society. This season she appears in recital at London’s Wigmore Hall.

Ms. Blythe has also developed a strong relationship with composer Alan Smith. She premiered his Vignettes: Ellis Island, a song cycle written especially for her, and has since performed it at the Ravinia Festival and with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She recently premiered his Covered Wagon Woman, a piece commissioned for her residency with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Stephanie Blythe was recently named Musical America’s 2009 Vocalist of the Year. Her other awards include the 2007 Opera News Award and the 1999 Richard Tucker Award.