Program Notes: Mahler Symphony No. 5

DAVID ROBERTSON 
Light forming a piano concerto 
BORN: July 19, 1958, in Santa Monica, California 
WORK COMPOSED: 2022–2023 
WORLD PREMIERE: October 15, 2022, in Orlando, Florida, with the Orlando Philharmonic conducted by Eric Jacobsen and featuring soloist Orli Shaham 

What to Listen For: 

• A cadenza — a solo designed to showcase the pianist’s skill and finesse — appears near the end of ...la musique incertaine de leur voix.... 

• Although divided into three movements, each part of Light forming flows into the next, signaled by a triumphant chord from the soloist and orchestra after the first movement, and hushed piano notes before the finale. 

• Anfore del cuore features a tender duet of piano and horn whose part is indicated in the score “as if from afar.” 

Light forming marks a return to composition for David Robertson. In an interview for these program notes, he recalled setting aside composing decades ago because of “so many things to do like raising children and playing other people’s music.” What he humbly calls his “day job” is in reality a storied career, which includes leading the Paris-based Ensemble intercontemporain for much of the 1990s, a fruitful Music Directorship of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (2005–2018), and guest-conducting major orchestras around the world. 

The impetus to write a piano concerto originated in what the composer remembers as a “felicitous situation.” As a conductor, Robertson and his wife, pianist Orli Shaham, have performed “28 or 29 different piano concertos” together in recent years. Inspired by her agility at switching from one musical language to another, Robertson began writing, seeking to weave Shaham’s fluency with an “intimidating range of repertory” into the concerto. 

The first movement borrows a phrase from Proust’s epic In Search of Lost Time. For Robertson, ...la musique incertaine de leur voix... (“the uncertain music of their voices”) alludes to “the phenomenal specificity and complexity of the human voice.” Noting that that we hear language initially as sound, the composer observes that while we recognize the meaning of spoken words, we also have the ability to sense those words — or experience them in poetry — as raw, latent music. 

The concerto’s opening flourish explores this idea. A stuttering series of the note A on the piano unfolds at once into a melody and rhythmic motive: a triplet (three notes played in the time of two). Indeed, the presence of lyrically compacted, almost speech-like rhythms permeate the work. This hesitant pulsation spreads to the strings, whose gliding notes shape the soloist’s brief bursts into an anguished nocturne. A sprightly exclamation from the flute teases the piano; roused from melancholy, a jagged fragment stretches into a tune that soars and circles through the entire ensemble. 

Near the end of ...la musique incertaine de leur voix..., a cadenza emerges as a slow waltz that sways into a twinkling theme up to the upper reaches of the keyboard. The flute recalls the opening series of A notes heard at the start followed by a giant run on the piano of 11 notes on the right hand at the same time as 12 notes erupt on the left hand. Egged on by the strings tapping out notes with the wood of the bow, the pianist launches into a flurry of jubilant, animated passages. 

A triumphant chord flows into Anfore del cuore (“amphorae of the heart”). In place of a joyous idyll, orchestra and soloist approach each other with trepidation. The composer writes in the score, “Horns and bassoons are like a background glow, and should be almost inaudible so that the clarinets, flute and vibraphone melody is in the foreground.” 

Several duets, notably between piano and horn (and later, bassoon), suggest that love begins as an empty vessel to be filled gradually with companionship and communion. Throughout this movement, the strings create a brooding atmosphere reminiscent of the Adagio religioso in the Third Piano Concerto of Béla Bartók, which Robertson identifies as “one of the models that marked me as a musician.” 

Rounding to joy is an exuberant dance. A few poked piano notes quickly build up into exclamatory chords that drive the finale. A rush of episodes slyly winks and nods to music both composer and soloist have performed and loved, from Mozart and the high spirits of Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto to playfully fractured horns and trumpets that evoke Messiaen. Robertson describes the concerto as “a love letter” and adds with genuine awe, “to the one who actually has the responsibility to play piano in the house” — Orli Shaham. 

GUSTAV MAHLER 
Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor 
BORN: July 7, 1860, in Kaliště, Bohemia in Austria-Hungary 
DIED: May 18, 1911, in Vienna in Austria-Hungary 
WORK COMPOSED: 1901–1902 
WORLD PREMIERE: October 18, 1904, in Cologne, Germany with the Gürzenich Orchestra, conducted by the composer. 

What to Listen For: 

• Moody and tempestuous, the Fifth Symphony embraces a range of emotions and styles from surging romantic melodies and pastoral frolics to biting satire and maniacal climaxes. 

• Mahler begins this symphony with a devastating funeral march and concludes it with a long-sought triumphal joy. Amidst this emotional arc sits the ravishing Adagietto, which was often detached from the symphony and was for many years Mahler’s most famous composition. 

Mahler began composing his Fifth Symphony in 1901, a year that not only marked a change in his conducting career but inaugurated a new period in his personal and artistic life. He had resigned the directorship of the Vienna Philharmonic after suffering a near-fatal blood hemorrhage. Musicians complained about Mahler’s perfectionism in rehearsals, and despite packed houses, critics disliked his vivid re-orchestrations of Beethoven and Schumann symphonies. Later that year, he met Alma Schindler and fell in love; they married in March 1902. 

The Fifth differs decisively from Mahler’s previous symphonies. In a departure from his Second, Third and Fourth symphonies, the Fifth lacks a movement showcasing a singer whose texts might help explain the music or the composer’s intentions. According to Natalie Bauer-Lechner, a friend who summered with the composer in 1901, Mahler declared, “The human voice has absolutely no place in it.” And unlike his First Symphony — which his extensive (and later jettisoned) program notes outlined as a “symphonic poem in five movements” — Mahler told Bauer-Lechner, “the Fifth doesn’t need words, for everything is expressed in terms of pure music. It will be a proper symphony in four movements...” 

When it premiered in 1904, the “proper” symphony had five movements allocated to three gargantuan parts. Translated as “Funeral March,” the title of the first movement serves as a terse program note. The movement commences with an obsessively repeated trumpet motto, which may remind some listeners of the iconic four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The trumpet’s rhythmic tattoo threads throughout the movement, which veers from a dirge in the strings to grandiloquent climaxes. 

Part I concludes with Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz (“Moving stormily, with the greatest vehemence”), which churns through a number of keys to create a blunt contrast with the unmistakable D-major of the Scherzo. Fragments and passages from the Funeral March reappear albeit with intensified anguish and “the greatest vehemence.” What philosopher and Mahler scholar Theodor Adorno calls “the fantastic character of a celestial apparition” of a glimmering brass chorale is ruthlessly cut short. The rapid tempo of this convulsive “storm” hints at the temporal outline of the symphony: the first and fourth movements are slow while the second and final movements are fast; the central Scherzo serves as the keystone of the symphony. 

In a letter to Alma, Mahler exclaimed, "The Scherzo is a devil of a movement!" probably due to jolting shifts in mood and style. Announced by four horns, the first measures are by turns jolly and dance-like until a grand chord reveals a vista for the poetic solo horn obbligato. Austrian country dances (ländler) and stately Viennese waltzes wend their way through the Scherzo until contorting into a fiery ending. 

According to the conductor Willem Mengelberg — deemed by Mahler to be his finest interpreter – the Adagietto is a love song for his wife Alma. A pining proclamation, the sumptuous scoring for harp and strings also reveals Mahler’s intimate knowledge of the orchestra: the brass players get to rest for the hectic finale. 

The Rondo—Finale opens with a rustic scene painted by a gallant solo horn and merry responses from the solo bassoon, oboe and clarinet. This almost comical episode echoes one of Mahler’s settings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, namely, the unjust music contest depicted in “Lob des hohen Verstandes” (“In Praise of Lofty Intellect”), which is an undeniable jab at parochial, narrow-minded critics. 

Earlier themes return, including the lush melody of the Adagietto, now accelerated and urgent. Mahler quotes other composers too, such as Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (another music contest!). These recollections of previous movements converge in abrupt juxtapositions and riotous counterpoint — all crowned by the brass chorale from the second movement, here elongated and ennobled. 

Adorno’s summary of Mahler’s music aptly encapsulates the Fifth’s closing moments; the ending — and its tinges with self-doubt — “enrages those who have made their peace with the world by reminding them of what they must exorcise.” There is only victory in continuing to fight. 

All notes by Christopher DeLaurenti © 2023