At the Symphony: Introduction to Mahler

For my friend and I this weekend was our first symphony concert as season ticket holders. 

The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra directed by Miguel Harth-Bedoya featured Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G Major.  Before this weekend I knew nothing about Mahler.  

Prior to the performance was a pre-concert lecture which we attended.  According to the lecturer, who was dressed to perform--but only if the audience applauded long and loud for an encore, Mahler was born in Bohemia to a poor family of twelve siblings of which only four survived.  His parents recognized that he had musical talents so they saved and scraped money to send him to Vienna.  There he excelled in piano, and  he learned music composition but that didn't take until he was older.  Instead he became a conductor and composed music during the summer months when there were no concerts.  He was known to be mean and dictatorial as a conductor, but no one complained about the quality of his production.  

Mahler had his eye on becoming the director of the Vienna Opera.  He was well qualified for the position; however, he was a Jew.  For that reason alone he would not be able to get the position unless he converted to Roman Catholicism.  He did and got the job.  The lecturer said that in Mahler's life he waged many internal battles  with himself: was he a country bumpkin or a sophisticated urbanite, was he a Jew or a Catholic, was he a conductor or a composer?  

When Mahler composed music he would do so by a beautiful lake.  He would construct a hut and stay by the lake writing music. 

Even though his Fourth Symphony was not very well received at the time, Mahler was right in predicting that it would become his most popular.

With utmost clarity and deceptive simplicity Mahler looks through the eyes of a child at heavenly bliss in Das Himmlische Leben [the fourth movement].  Naturally this bliss includes culinary delights--from the perspective of a needy Austrian Catholic child.(Jane Vial Jaffe, program notes)

The symphony began with the sounds of sleigh bells that beckoned the listener to follow and then as the strings joined in it swept one gently along with the melody.  It really is quite beautiful, and words do not do it justice to describe the experience.  There were moments where the music is hushed as if to bid the audience good night only to erupt in boisterous passion.  Soprano Ilana Davidson sang Das Himmlische Leben in the fourth movement.  Her voice was crystal.  

There's no music at all on the earth

that can ever compare with ours...

The angelic voices

delight the senses!

For all things awake to joy.

--Das Knaben Wunderhorn

Here is a clip of Leonard Bernstein conducting the first half of the first movement.