We ended last season in spectacular fashion with the Second Symphony of Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). This year, we take up his Symphony No. 5, written nearly a decade later (1901–1902). There are striking similarities between them. Both are, unconventionally, in five movements rather than four. Both move from the darkness of an opening funeral march to an optimistic close that leans heavily on a chorale. And in both works, that journey is full of shocking juxtapositions.

But that decade brought a change in Mahler’s vision. The Second takes its inspiration (or ...

We ended last season in spectacular fashion with the Second Symphony of Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). This year, we take up his Symphony No. 5, written nearly a decade later (1901–1902). There are striking similarities between them. Both are, unconventionally, in five movements rather than four. Both move from the darkness of an opening funeral march to an optimistic close that leans heavily on a chorale. And in both works, that journey is full of shocking juxtapositions.

But that decade brought a change in Mahler’s vision. The Second takes its inspiration (or more accurately, its challenge) from Beethoven, his Ninth Symphony in particular; the Fifth, with its heavy reliance on counterpoint, is an homage to Bach. The joy at the end of the Second, supported by words as well as music, is spiritually transcendent; the joy at the end of the Fifth, purely instrumental, is more down to earth. (Indeed, it almost seems as if Bach had replaced whatever complex and ambiguous spirituality had fueled the Second. As Mahler said, “In Bach, all the seeds of music are found, as the world is contained in God. It’s the greatest polyphony that ever existed.”)

Most important, the Second is firmly placed in the 19th century; in fact, it seems intended as its culmination. The Fifth—even though its Bach inspiration looks further back, to the Baroque—launches the new century. Not that it’s forbidding—it is an easily accessible piece. But it’s surely wild: with its off-kilter phrasing, unexpected dissolves, odd changes in sonority, and swerves in direction, the Fifth promotes formal disruption to a central position in the music’s aesthetic. In a letter to his wife Alma after the first rehearsal, Mahler described it as a “foaming, roaring, raging sea of sound” in which “new worlds are forever being engendered, only to crumble to ruins the moment after.”

The work’s five movements are organized into three parts. Part One consists of a pair of hyper-intense movements. The first, introduced by a stark trumpet solo, is what conductor Larry Loh calls a “stately” funeral march. It’s followed by a movement which might seem to be a tumultuous response. The opening is marked Stürmisch bewegt. Mit grösster Vehemenz (Turbulently emotional. With the greatest vehemence)—and it’s a whirlwind of emotions, bursts of fury frequently interrupted by moments of sublime tenderness. The movement seems ready to conclude majestically as it builds to an affirmative chorale—but it suddenly collapses, and the movement lurches to its end, where, all energy spent, it expires with a single pp tap on the timpani.

Part Two begins after a long pause. It’s a single movement, but it’s the symphony’s longest, a Scherzo, with major obligato (solo) passages for the first-desk horn. It brings a substantial shift in mood, as we move from minor to major. In fact, it brings multiple shifts in mood. As our principal horn Jon Garland says, “One of the most challenging things about the obligato part is the wide variety of expression that is required. The opening passages are quite strong, and then the music transitions to these extended lyrical passages. But not for long, because it then transitions back to those opening passages, but this time with a somewhat more athletic take.” The careening movement is brimming with waltzes and ländler (the waltz’s rural predecessor)—and since these dances often sound inebriated, the music stumbles in a way that throws you off balance. As Mahler put it, its “the very devil of a movement.”

Part Three of the symphony returns to the two-movement structure, although the relation between the two is different this time. First we get an Adagietto—Mahler’s most famous single movement, often played alone. In contrast to the other four movements, this one—which cuts the orchestra down to strings and harp—is patient and luminous. Yet despite its relative straightforwardness, it has, over the years, generated the most varied interpretive responses. Conductors have chosen dramatically divergent tempos: a normal performance lasts anywhere from seven to twelve minutes (an unusually wide range), and there are outliers that stretch out to a quarter of an hour. There are radical differences in affect, as well. On the one hand, it’s had an honored role at ceremonies of mourning, especially since Leonard Bernstein played it at Robert Kennedy’s funeral—after which Jacqueline Kennedy, in a letter to the conductor, described it as “this strange music of all the gods who were crying,” adding “[it] was everything in my heart, … peace and pain and such drowning beauty.”  Yet the work had a fundamentally different origin: it did not emerge from grief but was rather written, according to Mahler’s good friend Willem Mengelberg, as a love letter to Alma. Viewed from this perspective, it reflects not only Mahler’s longing, but also premonitions of the anguish that came to characterize their difficult marriage. For Larry, it’s definitely a love letter, but “it is a beautiful and contemplative work that could be taken in many different ways other than what was intended.” As for tempo, says Larry, “finding the right tempo is difficult You have to find that balance of stillness, but also enough direction, so that you can take in the phrases.”

“Of course, it’s always special to listen to the very beautiful Adagietto movement,” adds Jon, “but for the first horn, it’s particularly special because you are also simultaneously thinking quite a bit about playing the first note of the fifth movement.” That upbeat movement, which comes without a break, begins transparently, first with a horn call, then with a conversation among solo winds. But despite the easy-going opening, we soon find ourselves in a vigorous fugue for full orchestra, and the music hurtles ahead—characteristically, with a lot of sharp turns (and reminiscences from earlier movements)—until we realize that we are heading toward a reprise of the failed chorale from the second movement. Will it succeed this time? Yes—but in a uniquely Mahlerian way. I won’t spoil the effect by telling you precisely what happens; rest assured that it is both surprising and fulfilling, and that it leads to the most rambunctiously joyful ending in the entire Mahler canon.

This is the first time Larry has conducted the entire work (he’s conducted the Adagietto often), but it’s hardly new to him. In fact, it has “obsessed” him since his student days. “To me it has incredible depth and emotion. I would listen to it in the dark, thinking it was the pinnacle of what you can do with an orchestra emotionally. And I would study it and dream about the day that I would get to do it.” Listening tonight, you’ll understand that dream.

What can you program before the Mahler Fifth? On our one previous performance of the work, it was coupled with Saint-Saëns’s delightfully light-weight Second Piano Concerto. At the time, soloist Jon Nakamatsu quipped that it would be “overkill” to pair it with something that put equal demands on the listener: “You’re going to get a huge steak and potatoes, you don’t want ham right before. You want something that will prepare you, like salad.” Tonight we’ve chosen another deft work, the 1877 Variations on a Rococo Theme by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)—and coincidentally, tonight’s soloist  Julian Schwarz offers a similar metaphor, suggesting it was an “apéritif” that avoided the problem of “two main courses.”

The work was written for the virtuoso cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen—who not only inspired it, but also gave Tchaikovsky advice and introduced some alterations (including removing one of the variations and reordering others) that made their way into the first edition and became standard for decades. Usually, in a case like this—say, Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, which was “improved” by his friend, conductor  Ferdinand Löwe—the composer’s original score eventually takes over. Not so here. The Fitzenhagen version is still widely performed—and, in fact, that’s the version that Julian will offer tonight. Why? Perhaps some of it is nostalgia—it’s the version he first learned, and he still has a certain “bias” toward it. More important, he says, he has “a tremendous respect for Fitzenhagen as a cellist. There are obviously no recordings of him; but we know from his editorial markings and his own compositions the kind of techniques that he was good at, the kind of approach he had to playing. Tchaikovsky wasn’t a cellist; and as is the case with Joseph Joachim and the Brahms Violin Concerto, the piece is inseparable from the advocacy of the player.”

Most important, though, he believes that Fitzenhagen’s changes improve the work. Julian is “not a great fan” of the original Eighth Variation which Fitzenhagen—who was clearly not a great fan, either—removed; and Julian believes that the exciting variation that was originally in fourth place works much better at the end (where Fitzenhagen moved it) than buried in the middle.

As for the spirit of the piece: although it is based on a pseudo-rococo theme of Tchaikovsky’s own invention (there’s a similar pastiche of 18th-century music in his late opera Queen of Spades), and although it contains a certain amount of “prim and proper” music that evokes “people in white wigs,” Tchaikovsky’s “lush, heart-on-the-sleeve” romanticism still comes through. In fact, Julian sees it as closely related to Tchaikovsky’s ballet music. Yes, Tchaikovsky’s work is made up of true variations—that is, manipulations of an initial theme. But the term “variation” also refers to a solo number in a ballet—and Julian takes that as encouragement to “represent different characters in the piece.” For those who miss hearing The Nutcracker during the off-season, this may be the next-best thing.

Peter J. Rabinowitz

Have any comments or questions? Please write to me at prabinowitz@SyracuseOrchestra.org