SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Colorado MahlerFest 2008: Boulder, Colorado 9-13.1.2008 (MF)


It sounds almost contradictory. Colorado MahlerFest. What can one expect from a festival devoted to Gustav Mahler held far from music capitals like Vienna, London, or even New York? And what kind of festival is it anyway? Well, Colorado MahlerFest – the twenty-first consecutive yearly running of a week-long celebration of the life and works of Gustav Mahler – was held on the campus of Colorado University in relatively balmy, snow-free Boulder on January 9-13 of this year. Far from being an event comprising only concerts and perhaps a pre-concert talk, Colorado MahlerFest boasts open rehearsals, chamber music recitals, a full day of seminars, and yes, orchestral concerts as well. The seminars are given not just by enthusiasts but by the top rank of Mahler scholars in the world. Stephen Hefling, perhaps the dean of Mahler experts based in the United States, has spoken at several Fests, and previous events have hosted Henry-Louis de La Grange, Donald Mitchell, the late Stuart Feder and Ted Reilly, and several other well known Mahler biographers and experts. Colorado MahlerFest, winner of the Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft’s (IGMG) Gold Medal for promoting Mahler’s cause, can make a solid claim to being the foremost ongoing celebration of Mahler in the world.

This year’s MahlerFest was somewhat controversial, at least for the organizers. On tap were two relatively under-performed pieces that were seeing their MahlerFest premieres: Todtenfeier (Tf), the symphonic movement that, after some fascinating edits by the composer, became the first movement of the 2nd Symphony; and the original three-movement version of Mahler’s self-described Opus No. 1, Das klagende Lied (DkL), the Song of Lamentation, Mahler’s “little fairy tale” in which, as he told Natalie Bauer-Lechner, he first came into his own “as Mahler.” It was controversial because neither piece is very familiar to lay listeners; even few Mahlerians would claim either of them as their favorite, and it was rare to find a person who before this weekend had heard both of them in concert. In fact, it is thought that these were only the second set of performances of the original DkL in the United States since the appearance of the work’s critical edition in 1999. In the year before MahlerFest, the attitude had been voiced: “Oh, I don’t know either of those pieces; maybe I won’t go this year.” That idea turned out to be a huge mistake.

MahlerFest 2008 proper opened with a recital of all of the so-called Songs of Youth (a title given by an early publisher, not the composer). Performed mostly by Colorado University students, these songs set the stage for DkL. Several themes in these songs would be incorporated into the “fairy tale,” yet another instance of Mahler’s overarching idea of synthesizing song and symphony. The only non-student to perform one of these songs was mezzo-soprano Julie Simson, voice professor at Colorado University, who in years past performed MahlerFest’s first traversal of Das Lied and several Wunderhorn songs. This year Ms. Simson sang Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz'. While the students’ songs were very satisfying, Julie’s performance was at a completely different level. And this was only a prelude, because she then gave a performance of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen that left us breathless. These songs, too, have themes that we would hear in DkL. And there was a nice bit of closure in these chamber recitals, as two of the students were "victims" in Thomas Hampson's master class last year. They apparently took his sometimes very frank advice on board, as their respective songs were beautifully sung and convincingly portrayed. In a typical example of MahlerFest’s outreach to the local arts community, this program was repeated in Lafayette, a Boulder suburb, two days later.

Saturday was seminar day, which for me is an event that rivals the concerts. First, some background on the main work of the week, Das klagende Lied. Mahler started the piece as an 18-year-old conservatory student in 1878. He finished the three-movement work in 1880, and submitted it for the Beethoven Prize. It lost. He revised it in 1898, deleting the first movement, Waldmärchen (Forest Legend); this version was published the next year and remained the authoritative one until 1999 when the IGMG published a critical edition of the original version.

Salvatore Calomino, associate professor of German at University of Wisconsin-Madison, spoke on "Sources, Versions, and Composition: Mahler's Path to Das klagende Lied." Salvatore started with a story about a queen, two rivals for her hand, a golden rose, and a singing bone. Sound familiar? It was a folk tale from Liberia. That was his way of showing that the Grimm tale from which DkL was taken had analogs in several other cultures. Salvatore praised Mahler’s adaptation, which showed that even at the tender age of 20 or even 18, Mahler was just as attuned to literary and theatrical considerations as he was to music, and that his frequent and sometimes radical restructuring of poems had its roots long before Das Lied or even the Rückert songs.

Jim Zychowicz, editor of the Chicago Mahlerites' Naturlaut, (and regular Seen and Heard conributor. Ed) then spoke on "What Das klagende Lied Tells Us: Perspectives on Mahler's Op. 1." Jim pointed out that while Mahler did revise the piece, he preserved the early version; this conflicted with Mahler’s warning against studying composers' earlier thoughts. Jim noted that the work was popular in the decade after Mahler's death, being conducted in Vienna by Schreker, Freed, and Walter. Is DkL only a work for specialists, or does it have importance for Mahler's later style? Jim noted several instances of DkL-like music in later Mahlerian works; in assessing the importance of these and other techniques for Mahler's later work, the concept of "quotation" is insufficient; DkL is present in more than just a few stray quotations.

Conductor Bob Olson then spoke about both works but mostly about DkL. The cantata "is a concerto for horn-fifths," a technique well known since the Baroque era. Bob pointed out some difficulties that plagued the young composer. In several places Mahler juxtaposes march music with horn-fifths but without a direction to slow down; the effect sounds like cartoon music. There are many markings in the parts left by other orchestras that have performed the work. Why? Because some of the music as written “simply doesn't work.” The balances are wrong in many places; also, DkL is severely sectionalized, what with the constant changes in key and tempo and the soloists jumping up and down to sing only a couple of bars.

This was one of the most interesting things to come out of the entire week. At a post-rehearsal party one night, I expressed the conventional wisdom: DkL is a shocking piece, no wonder Mahler didn't win the Beethoven Prize. No, said Bob, it is not a shocking piece. Mahler lost the competition because the piece wasn't shocking enough. Look at the horn-fifths, a well-known technique for 200 years. Leitmotivs? Pure Wagner, who wasn't even dead yet. Off-stage music? That had been done before. No, Mahler lost the competition not because he shocked the jury, but because he didn't impress them. I’m still mulling this over a couple of weeks after the fact.

Jerry Bruck, one of the world’s foremost recording engineers and the man in charge of most MahlerFest recordings, then spoke on "My Life With Gustav." Jerry, as many readers know, was in at the creation for several pieces of Mahlerian history. He was part of the effort that got Alma Mahler to rescind her ban on performances of Mahler’s 10th Symphony – which she had no authority to do but got away with anyway. He played a key role in helping Deryk Cooke finish one of the editions of the work, even paying Cooke the equivalent of two weeks' salary to do so. And most importantly for this MahlerFest, he discovered a manuscript of Waldmärchen while going through one of Alma's trunks after she died. This one-hour talk went way too fast; we could have listened to him the entire afternoon.

Marilyn McCoy, frequent MahlerFest lecturer, then spoke on "Momentous Moments in Mahler's Das klagende Lied." "Mahler foreshadowed the entire piece in the first six measures, although we don’t know that yet": the horn calls, suggesting a forest landscape; an oscillating motive in the clarinets, suggesting the rustling of leaves; harp arpeggios, which could be sleep, death, or something supernatural; and the rising 5th, which will become the symbol of the younger brother's death. Measures 7-35 are no less portentous. The horns march into the forest. But the harmonies between the horns and strings don't match; something is wrong. More harp arpeggios suggest a dreamlike atmosphere. The buildup to a dissonant climax portends something awful. This is followed by the bad brother's searching motive (a minor triad) followed by a macabre clarinet postlude, also a minor triad. Marilyn continued with an analysis of many leitmotivs – which she was careful to say were open to interpretation – that made us appreciate just how calculating the young Mahler was. None of us, after this talk, would ever think of DkL as being less "ideated" than any of Mahler's symphonies. Less sophisticated, maybe, but certainly not put together with less thought.

Marilyn closed her talk by discussing what many of us think was the young composer’s greatest mistake: Why exactly did Mahler delete the first movement, which contains such great music and has many references to incidents that would occur in the next two? She speculated that by the time of revision, in 1899, Mahler looked back at the 18-year-old piece and was embarrassed by the obvious similarities to Wagner and the possible overuse of leitmotivs. To remedy this he deleted the first movement, but that left many scenes in the remaining two movements without reference. So he revised those. But unlike other composers – and luckily for us – Mahler did not destroy Waldmärchen, the deleted first movement. So we now have two versions of DkL, the original and the revised. Either one is legitimate; what’s to be avoided is the so-called hybrid version which consists of Waldmärchen tacked on to the revised, two-movement edition. This idea of possible embarrassment, coupled with Bob Olson’s argument that DkL is not a radical work, was the main philosophical issue raised during the week.

Seminar day was brought to a close by Stephen Hefling, who spoke on "Perspectives on Todtenfeier." Stephen, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Tf, noted that the piece was planned from the very beginning to be the first movement of a symphony. But what inspired the piece? It turns out that the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz wrote a poem called Todtenfeier that was translated by none other than Mahler's good friend, Siegfried Lipiner. Stephen compared various parts of the poem's plot to themes in Tf, and parts of different editions of Tf to each other. This lecture was typical Hefling, a very literate, high-level discussion of interdisciplinary topics delivered with humor and enthusiasm.

But we came for the music. During the rehearsals, members of the Boulder Chorale, directed by Tim Snyder, were, I think, surprised at the intensity that Bob Olson displayed and, in true Mahlerian style, demanded of himself and them. There were some missed cues, intonation problems, ragged entries. By the end of the dress rehearsal, we were wondering if another day of rehearsal would have been a good idea. What would happen at the actual concert the next day?

We needn't have worried. Tf, which started the program, was performed with tremendous authority and confidence. Olson took it at a rather deliberate pace, and I am sure it was slower than most traversals of the corresponding movement of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony even after taking account of the extra 29 bars of music. When the great dissonant downward passage came, Olson stretched it, and us, to the breaking point. It was a thrilling performance, but the bigger challenge, DkL, was next. Would the two essentially amateur groups, the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra and the Boulder Chorale, be able to meet the challenge?

Now all you purists out there, sit down and try to take this calmly: the off-stage band passages were recorded; there was simply too much to organize, too few players to accommodate everything. Things worked okay in rehearsals, but this single point of failure had everybody nervous. What would happen if a cue were missed, or the percussionist in charge simply missed the Play button – which did happen in one rehearsal. That would have been a catastrophe, needless to say. Thankfully, everything went smoothly. Perfection was not achieved, but who needs that? This was live, committed music, a DkL that went from strength to strength, the orchestra sounding great and in excellent balance especially when heard from the balcony. The choir was decisive, massively improved from the night before. And the soloists – Kara Guggenmos, Lucille Beer, Joel Burcham, and Gregory Gerbrandt; and Knaben soloists Katie Fillius and Kristin Weisbach – were superb, negotiating the obstacle course of a very cramped stage as well as the horrific challenges set by the 20-year-old Gustav Mahler.

Everything seemed to go well for both concerts, even the things that were perhaps not deliberate. There was no boy soprano in Boulder – or anywhere in the United States, according to an expert Olson consulted – who was up to the task, so they opted for two young women (Katie and Kristin, above). Oddly enough, they looked somewhat alike. They came from the choir, so they were dressed in plain black. And neither of them wore much makeup, so the stage lights gave them a pallor. It was positively spooky to hear their reproachful songs at the end, totally appropriate for a ghostlike accusation.

And what an ending to this piece! I'm not talking about the last shock, but the subtle, understated A-minor chord – which would be repeated almost 25 years later at the end of Mahler’s 6th Symphony. "Death itself," one attendee said, and is he right. And then Mahler hits us with the crash, the castle walls come tumbling down, and all is silence. Except for the roar of the audience.

Where else can you hear the Songs of Youth, Todtenfeier, and Das klagende Lied in the span of three days, all delivered with expertise and enthusiasm? Nowhere but Boulder in January. Next year Colorado MahlerFest is doing Mahler’s 8th Symphony, again with the Boulder Chorale. They have to build stage extensions to accommodate all the performers, but as they have proven over the past 21 years, no sacrifice is too great in the service of the true star of Colorado MahlerFest, Gustav Mahler. For more on Colorado Mahlerfest, see www.mahlerfest.org.

Mitch Friedfeld


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