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1 0 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y C L A S S I C A L C E L E B R A T I O N

MAHLER’S SECOND

NASHVILLE SYMPHONY GIANCARLO GUERRERO, conductor NASHVILLE SYMPHONY CHORUSTUCKER BIDDLECOMBE, interim chorus director NICOLE CABELL, sopranoMICHELLE DEYOUNG, mezzo-soprano

KENNETH SCHERMERHORNJubilee: A Tennessee Quilting Party for Orchestra

INTERMISSION

GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony No. 2 in C minor, "Resurrection"

Allegro maestosoAndante moderatoIn ruhig fliessenderBewegungUrlichtScherzo

Nicole Cabell, sopranoMichelle DeYoung, mezzo-sopranoNashville Symphony Chorus

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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, AT 7 PM | FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, AT 8 PM | SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, AT 8 PM

ONE NASHVILLE PLACE

The quilting bee exhibit in the East Lobby was graciously loaned from the Tennessee State Museum. Display includes items from the personal collection of Jean Shaw, President, Music City Quilt Guild.

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TONIGHT’S CONCERTAT A GLANCE

KENNETH SCHERMERHORN Jubilee: A Tennessee Quilting Party for Orchestra

• The namesake of Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Kenneth Schermerhorn was music director of the Nashville Symphony from 1983 to 2005 and is credited with building the orchestra’s artistic quality and its commitment to performing, commissioning, and recording American music. Though (like Mahler) he was best known as a conductor, he also had a great passion for composing: This short piece for orchestra is one of over 50 works he wrote.

• Jubilee was commissioned by the state of Tennessee in 1985 for the inaugural session of the Governor’s School for the Arts, a statewide program for gifted high school students that continues to this day. Like Tennessee itself, the piece is divided into three distinct sections, each intended to capture the unique flavor of the state’s geographic regions — from the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee to celebrated musical traditions of Middle Tennessee and West Tennessee.

• Schermerhorn was a great lover of Mahler’s music and performed the composer’s music a number of times throughout his career. In a 2003, he told an interviewer, “For sheer conducting enjoyment, something I would liken to eating macadamia nuts, the symphonies of Gustav Mahler are a conductor’s delight.”

GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”

• Composed over six years, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 offers a resounding testament to the endurance of the human spirit. Only 28 at the time, the composer started work on the piece in 1888, initially calling it Totenfeier (German for “funeral rite”) and conceiving of it as a stand-alone, one-movement piece. As he progressed, however, Mahler realized that his ideas couldn’t be contained within a single movement, and the work expanded into five wide-ranging moments reflecting the full scope of Mahler’s ambitions.

• With this work, Mahler sought to pick up some of the thematic and philosophical ideas from his First Symphony, which explored the life of a heroic figure. In his Second Symphony, the hero has died, prompting Mahler to explore the following questions, as he put them: “What next? What is life and what is death? Why did you live? Why did you suffer? Is it all nothing but a huge, frightful joke?”

• Mahler’s early work was heavily influenced by literature and other writings. German writer Jean Paul’s novel Titan give his First Symphony its subtitle, while the intense philosophical explorations of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer strongly informed how the philosopher approached his own art form. The folk poems and songs found in the German collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”) provided thematic material for the third and fourth movements of this symphony.

• The composer’s musical touchstones and references are equally broad, ranging from Beethoven (whose choral Ninth Symphony provided a daunting precedent) to Wagner to the earthy sounds of klezmer music.

• Mahler had very precise ideas about how he wanted his symphonies to be performed. He indicated that there should be a five-minute pause between the first and second movements of his Symphony No. 2 — though most orchestras don’t follow this instruction — while the third, fourth and fifth movements are to be played continuously, with no pauses.

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ALKENNETH

DEWIT T SCHERMERHORN

Composed: 1985First performance: July 18, 1985, by an ensemble of Tennessee students led by Schermerhorn. First Nashville Symphony performance: December 3, 1985, at TPAC with SchermerhornEstimated length: 12 minutes

Jubilee! A Tennessee Quilting Party for Orchestra

Born on November 20, 1929, in Schenectady, N.Y.; died on April 18, 2005, in Nashville

It happens that Kenneth Schermerhorn le� us with an ideal program entrée for this season

marking the 10th anniversary of the concert hall named in his honor. Jubilee! A Tennessee Quilting Party for Orchestra, which was performed during Schermerhorn Symphony Center’s inaugural season a decade ago, is a product of this legendary musician’s multifaceted talents. It dates from the �rst years of his tenure with the Nashville Symphony, an association that began in 1982 with the conductor serving in an advisory position.

Along with profoundly transforming the Nashville Symphony as its music director from 1983 until his death in 2005, Schermerhorn le� an indelible mark on American musical life through his other major achievements as a conductor: with the Milwaukee Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and the American Ballet �eater. A protégé of Leonard Bernstein’s at Tanglewood, he became Bernstein’s assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic and also helmed the Hong Kong Philharmonic in the 1980s.

Jubilee! stitches together Schermerhorn’s gi�s as a composer, master orchestrator, and educator. �e piece was prompted by then-Gov. Lamar Alexander’s initiative to reform education in Tennessee through a network of governor’s schools for highly talented students — including

the Governor’s School for the Arts, which opened in the summer of 1985. Patrick McGu�ey, former principal trumpet of the Nashville Symphony and a friend of Schermerhorn’s, was appointed executive director for the new school’s inaugural session and persuaded him to write and conduct a new piece for the occasion.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

Designed as a concert overture in 333 measures, Jubilee! alludes to the social-artistic

tradition of the quilting party (a mainstay of social life for women especially in the 19th century). Schermerhorn translates this metaphor into musical terms, with the orchestra naturally playing the role of the community. As McGu�ey writes of the work, Schermerhorn “painted a pastiche of motifs of regional images conjured through music, connecting the harmony and melodic references to times gone by as if there were a musical sinew binding it all together.”

�e Overture is cast in three parts, with elements of a fantasy on its material, as themes and orchestral colors evoke di�erent eras and regions in Tennessee’s history. �e opening section represents the period of discovery by new settlers and what McGu�ey suggests may be “clouded mists of the Great Smoky Mountains” and “the verdant land of East Tennessee.” In the middle section the focus turns to the country and hymn sounds of Music City, followed by a clear illustration of Memphis’ jazzy vitality. Especially notable is Schermerhorn’s method of working his full orchestra into the tapestry in the �nal moments of the piece. McGu�ey praised Schermerhorn for giving Nashville “a greater insight into orchestral music,” adding, “He taught us [musicians of the Nashville Symphony] how to learn. His spirit is exempli�ed in this composition.”

Jubilee! A Tennessee Quilting Party for Orchestra is scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 harps, piano/celesta, and strings.

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Composed: 1888-94First performance: December 13, 1895, with the composer conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. Mahler also led the U.S. premiere in New York on December 8, 1908, with the New York Symphony. First Nashville Symphony performance: April 17 & 18, 1972, with music director Thor JohnsonEstimated length: Between 80 and 90 minutes

Symphony No. 2 in C minor (“Resurrection”)

Born on July 7, 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia; died on May 18, 1911, in Vienna

GUSTAV MAHLER

One of the young Gustav Mahler’s towering achievements, the Symphony No. 2 similarly

hearkens back to the Schermerhorn’s inaugural concert, during which two movements of the work were performed. Mahler himself took a good six years to work his initial ideas for the piece into the vast epic that the Second became — a turning point not only in his career but in the history of the symphony and its ambitions.

�e Second Symphony originated in 1888 as a single-movement piece, in the manner of a tone poem, titled Totenfeier (“Funeral Rite”) and inspired by the work of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. Mahler was still struggling with the �nal form of his First Symphony, completing its initial version that year (he was only 28 at the time). Already in the First he had dared to stretch the limits of symphonic form to take on existential questions of the meaning of life. �e First’s implicit portrayal of a Titanic hero’s struggle planted the idea for a “sequel” that would continue exploring the questions it had broached: “What next? What is life and what is death? Why did you live? Why did you su�er? Is it all nothing but a huge, frightful joke?” as Mahler himself put it.

�is impulse to grapple with such issues in musical terms was nothing new for a young Wagnerian in the twilight years of Romanticism.

Characteristically, though, Mahler took it to unprecedented extremes, infusing his early symphonies with inspirations from philosophy and literature. �ese works balance the atheist worldviews of such philosophers as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer with the touchingly simple piety expressed by the folk poems anthologized in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“�e Youth’s Magic Horn”).

Totenfeier started o� as a single instrumental movement to depict a state of solemn mourning in the wake of the death of the hero (and alter ego) around whom the First Symphony had centered. But Mahler realized that Totenfeier was becoming more prologue than epilogue and needed to be continued with additional movements. �is engendered a new problem of musical architecture: what kind of music could provide the necessary weight to such a funereal opening? �e choral solution of Beethoven’s Ninth was an obvious model, but that introduced another problem: how to end with a choral �nale without being seen as merely derivative of Beethoven? Mahler let these questions incubate while his conducting career advanced at a rapid clip. And then, he later wrote, “It �ashed on me like lightning, and everything became plain and clear in my mind! It was the �ash that all creative artists wait for….”

�is epiphany came when he attended an actual funeral commemoration, one held for the legendary conductor Hans von Bülow in February 1894. Bülow had been something of a mentor (though he failed to appreciate the novelty of Totenfeier when the young Mahler played it for him at the keyboard), as well as a living link to the legacy of Wagnerian music drama. �e memorial service included a choral hymn setting a poem called Auferstehung (“Resurrection”) by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803), best known for his Milton-inspired religious epic, �e Messiah. �e a�ecting simplicity and directness of Klopstock’s ode suggested the tone Mahler wanted to achieve. Within just a few weeks he sketched out the trajectory of the Second Symphony’s �nal (and longest) movement.

Much of Mahler’s music provoked misunderstanding or even hostility from his contemporaries, but the Second had a di�erent fate. It soon earned a warm reception from the public. Could this be the result of the

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overwhelmingly powerful a�rmation of its conclusion?

In any case, the essential scenario Mahler imagined for this �ve-movement work is easy enough to follow: �e hero of the First Symphony has died, and we are le� mourning by his grave in the tragic opening movement of the Second. �e Andante evokes a �ashback, according to Mahler: “a last lingering echo of days long past from the life of the one who was born to his grave in the �rst movement” and an interruption of “the grim, austere march of events.” �e puzzle of life returns in the Scherzo, the �rst of two consecutive movements that draw inspiration from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. In the ensuing fourth movement (Urlicht—“Primal Light”), Mahler introduces “the moving voice of naïve faith.”

Beautiful as that voice is, it represents a childlike illusion. �e gnawing questions of the �rst movement and the Scherzo return, more �ercely than ever, in the sweeping panorama of the �nal movement. Like �e Last Judgment of Michelangelo, Mahler paints a dramatic musical fresco of despair, hope, and anxious waiting before the answer comes in the vision of the �nal sections. But instead of merely avowing the conventional Christian piety of Klopstock’s poem. Mahler uses only two stanzas from the poem and gra�s his own verse onto it for the remainder. �e resulting vision of redemption is highly personal, and the music expressing it suggests that art itself provides the answer.

It’s also possible to interpret the Second as a kind of ongoing commentary on the musical traditions with which Mahler was most intimate. We see the composer reinterpreting the musical past, claiming his place within it — but also, signi�cantly, his di�erence — through the ambitious achievement of the Second. Ultimately, insisted Mahler, “I leave the interpretation of details to the imagination of each individual listener.”

IN THE SECOND SYMPHONY, WE SEE MAHLER REINTERPRETING THE MUSICAL PAST, CLAIMING HIS PLACE WITHIN IT AND HIS DIFFERENCE FROM IT.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

The C-minor key and low strings with which Mahler opens the Second evoke aspects of

the Funeral March from Beethoven’s Eroica, while the stormy �urry echoes the ominously stressful music at the beginning of Wagner’s Die Walküre. �e material outlines a kind of “death and trans�guration” already as it moves on to a glowing second theme (played by violins and horns) that rises hopefully and anticipates the “resurrection” music to come in the �nale. But that destination is still a long way o�. Mahler transforms the funeral march into a widely ranging journey that encompasses pastoral re�ections and immersive despair, building to one of the most shattering climaxes you’ll encounter in a concert hall. In its �nal gesture, the �rst movement plunges mercilessly downward, as if descending into the grave.

Mahler requests a lengthy pause of �ve minutes (though this is seldom followed in performance) to demarcate the opening movement and what follows. �e Andante seems less like a “contrast” than a blithe denial, a nostalgic glimpse touched with its own melancholy interludes. Mahler’s irony comes to the fore in the Scherzo, a purely instrumental elaboration of a song he’d written (to a text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn) about St. Anthony as he preaches to the uncomprehending �sh. �e music’s relentless �ow returns to the C minor of the �rst movement, with notable accents from the timpani. Mahler also references klezmer music, while the brushing of a birch branch against the bass drum adds a unique touch to this kaleidoscopic sound picture. Near the end we hear a shocking outburst of panic, described by the composer as a “cry of despair.”

Urlicht is as startlingly di�erent from what we’ve just heard as the Andante is from the Scherzo, but Mahler wanted the �nal three movements to be played as an interconnected sequence, with no pauses between. �e sound world is now intimate rather than epic, its signature a radiant brass chorale and the amber timbre of the mezzo-soprano. But even as the text invokes the promise of eternal life, resolution remains still far o�.

An even greater catastrophe has yet to be encountered. Mahler links back to earlier music

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by recalling the “cry of despair” at the start of the �nale. No more can the tormenting questions that began the Second be evaded. Immediately a�er this initial outburst, meanwhile, come anticipations of music to be heard in the �nale’s choral second part. Sounded by horns, the ascending “resurrection theme” mixes a sense of anxiety for the Day of Judgment with a series of fanfares, but the overall feeling is of prelude and expectation. Mahler’s dramatic technique here anticipates aspects of cinematic structure.

A terrifying percussion crescendo signals the arrival of an apocalyptic march, as Mahler calls for an o�stage band of brass and percussion. Particular textures come into focus: the horn and then brass issuing a roll call for the assembled dead known as “�e Great Summons,” followed by solo �ute and piccolo representing the deathly voice of the nightingale amid the ruins. �e composer maximizes the suspense through the use of silence. And from this, at last, emerges the chorus: not in blazing triumph but in a tour de force of hushed, a cappella singing that suddenly gives resonance to the promises scattered earlier through the Symphony. �e solo soprano �oats alo�, and the resurrection theme now rings out in its most thrilling form. Soprano and mezzo-soprano unite in a duet, while the full chorus swells with the orchestra for the unforgettable conclusion.

Symphony No. 2 is scored for soprano and mezzo-soprano solo, large mixed chorus, 4 flutes (all doubling piccolo), 4 oboes (3rd and 4th doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (3rd doubling bass clarinet), 2 E-flat clarinets (2nd doubling 4th clarinet), 4 bassoons (3rd and 4th doubling contrabassoon), 10 horns, 8 to 10 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, 2 sets of timpani, bass drum, snare drums, cymbals, tam-tams, triangle, glockenspiel, deep untuned bells, birch brush, off-stage percussion group (consisting of timpani, bass drum, triangle, and cymbals), organ, 2 harps, and strings.

— �omas May, the Nashville Symphony’s program annotator, is a writer and translator who covers classical and contemporary music. He blogs at memeteria.com.

ABOUT THE SOLOISTS

NICOLE CABELLsoprano

The 2005 winner of the BBC Singer of the

World Competition and a Decca recording artist,

Nicole Cabell is one of the most sought-a�er lyric sopranos of today. Her solo debut album, Soprano, was named Editor’s Choice by Gramophone and received the 2007 Georg Solti Orphée d’Or from the French Académie du Disque Lyrique and an Echo Klassik Award in Germany.

Cabell’s 2016/17 season features her debut as Bess in Porgy in Bess with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, performances of Mimi in La Bohème with the Minnesota Opera and the Cincinnati Opera, and performances of the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro with Angers Nantes Opera in France. In concert, she will sing Shéhérazade with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

Cabell’s 2015/16 season included her debut at the Grand �éâtre de Genève in the title role of Handel’s Alcina and returns to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as Violetta in La Traviata; to the Atlanta Opera as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette; to the Michigan Opera �eatre as Mimi in La Bohème; and to the Cincinnati Opera in a new role, Rosalinde, in Die Fledermaus.

Cabell’s previous engagements have included many exciting debuts, most notably with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as Eudoxie in concert performances of La Juive; the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall in Poulenc’s Gloria; the Santa Fe Opera as Musetta in La Bohème; and the Opéra de Montpellier as Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore.

Cabell’s awards include �rst place in both the Palm Beach Opera Vocal Competition and the Women's Board of Chicago Vocal Competition. She was a semi-�nalist in the 2005 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and earned �rst place in the American Opera Society competition in Chicago. She is the 2002 winner of the Union League’s Rose M. Grundman Scholarship and the 2002 Farwell Award with the Woman's Board of Chicago.

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Michelle DeYoung continues to be in

demand throughout the world, appearing regularly

with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, �e Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, �e Met Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, and the Concertgebouworkest. She has also performed at the prestigious festivals of Ravinia, Tanglewood, Saito Kinen, Edinburgh, and Lucerne.

Equally at home on the opera stage, DeYoung has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Teatro alla Scala, Bayreuth Festival, Berliner Staatsoper, Paris Opera, �eater Basel, and the Tokyo Opera. Her many roles include the title roles in Samson et Dalilah and �e Rape of Lucretia; Fricka, Sieglinde, and Waltraute in �e Ring Cycle; Kundry in Parsifal; Venus in Tannhäuser; Brangäne in Tristan und

MICHELLE DEYOUNGmezzo-soprano

strings program launching this fall · open house november 13 · lipscomb.edu/journeystrings program launching this fall · open house november 13 · lipscomb.edu/journey lipscomb.edu/journey

Where Education Is A Fine Art

Isolde; Eboli in Don Carlos; Amneris in Aïda; Santuzza in Cavellaria Rusticana; Marguerite in Le Damnation de Faust; and Jocaste in Oedipus Rex. She also created the role of the Shaman in Tan Dun’s �e First Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera.

A multi-GRAMMY® Award-winning recording artist, DeYoung has built an impressive discography that includes Kindertotenlieder, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, and Das Klagende Lied with Michael Tilson �omas and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS Media); Les Troyens with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live!); and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Bernard Haitink (CSO Resound) and the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck (Challenge Records International). Her �rst solo disc was released on the EMI label.

DeYoung’s many engagements this season include appearances with �e Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Paris Ensemble Intercontemporain, NHK Symphony in Tokyo, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the New Zealand Symphony.

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NASHVILLE SYMPHONY CHORUSTUCKER BIDDLECOMBEinterim chorus director

SOPRANOBeverly AndersonEsther BaeAmie BatesJill BoehmeStephanie BreiwaAngela Pasquini

Cli�ordClaire DelcourtSarah DonovanKatie DoyleKatherine

DrinkwaterBecky Evans-YoungKelli GauthierJessica GoldenGrace J. GuillAlly HardVanessa D. Jackson+Jené JacobsonCarla JonesStephanie KopelBarbara Jean LaiferKatie LawrencePenny Lueckenho�Jennifer LynnAlisha MenardAnna L MercerJean MillerCarolyn Naumann+Elizabeth Pirtle RingDeborah S.

SchraugerRebecca ShieldRenita J. Smith-

CrittendonAnna SpenceJennifer Goode

StevensClair SusongJennice �relkeldJan Staats VolkPaige WetzelKathryn WhitakerSylvia WynnCallie Zindel

ALTOAllison AaronCarol ArmesMelissa BourneMary Callahan+Cathi CarmackLauren ChristiansTeresa CissellLisa CooperKaitlin Cro�ordJanet Keese DaviesCarla M. DavisLeriel DavisJune DyeElizabeth GilliamDebra GreenspanJudith Gri�nLeah Handelsman+Mary Ann HewlettCallie JacksonLeah KoestenStephanie Kra�Shelly McCormackSarah MillerStephanie MoritzLisa PellegrinStacy L. ReedDebbie ReylandJacqueline ScottLaura SikesMadalynne SkeltonEmily StubbsChristina

VanRegenmorterSarah Wilson

TENOREric BoehmeBrett CartwrightAustin ChannellDavid W. DuboseJoe A. FitzpatrickFred GarciaDanny GordonKory HenkelLynn McGillDon MottMark NaumannRyan NorrisWilliam PaulKeith E. RamseyGeorge Rowe, IIIDavid M.

Satter�eld+Daniel SissomEddie SmithStephen F. SparksMichael

TamborninoJoel TellinghuisenChristopher

�ompsonBen Trotter III�eodore

WeckbacherJames W. WhiteJordan WilliamsScott WolfeJonathan Yeaworth

BASSGary AdamsGilbert AldridgeRobert A. AndersonAnthony R. BartaRobert D. BegtrupNick DavidsonTimothy DavisKenton Dickerson�omas EdenScott EdwardsDaniel ElderMark FilosaJohn FordStuart GarberRichard Hat�eldMichael W HopfeCarl JohnsonKenneth KeelJustin KirbyBill Loyd+Rob MahurinW. Bruce

MeriwetherAndrew Miller+Christopher MixonSteve MyersSteve PrichardJ Paul RoarkDavid E. Russell, IIScott SandersJesse SarloLarry StrachanDavid �omasBrian WarfordEric Wiu�

Jim White, presidentSara Crigger,

librarianJe� Burnham,

accompanist