Mahler Symphony #10 performed by National Symphony
On Friday March 2, 2018 the Kennedy Center did hold all its concerts despite the challenging weather, and I did hear a performance of the Symphony #10 in F# Major by Gustav Mahler, conducted by Donald Runnicles with the National Symphony (NSO notes). The conductor spoke before the performance and explained that the more popular Ninth was not Mahler’s farewell to earthly consciousness. (The concert program incorrectly lasted the key as F# Minor although the finale is in that key.)
There was pre-concert talk by artistic director Nigel Boon.
Mahler composed the first movement, a slow movement, and the third, “In Purgatory”. The rest of the symphony was sketched well, and completed by various composers including mostly Deryck Cooke.
Score, Barshai, Im Walde on YT, German Youth Orch.
The symphony is divided into two parts: Part 1 comprises the “familiar” opening Adagio (which has a very dissonant sudden explosion near the end) and a racy scherzo in E-flat, ending with a bang.
Part 2 comprises the artistic purgatory, a heavy-handed second scherzo which ends on a single drum beat. The beats continue, impressively as performed last night, into the finale which then moves to a workmanlike Allegro Moderato which reworks the material of the first movement before building up to a majestic climax and then subsiding to a peaceful close.
I had a Columbia recording of Ormandy’s performance in the early 1970s.
The first movement introduces a shocking dissonance of 9 notes before the end of the development, reminding one of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, and perhaps of Scriabin’s Black Mass. The dissonance recurs in the finale. Bruckner used a similar dissonance in the slow movement of the Ninth.
A good question would be why this work is more accepted when performed as “completed” than is Bruckner’s Ninth.
The Millennium Stage free performance last night included the cheery Brahms Violin Sonata #2 in A Major, Op 100 (1886) and the Violin and Piano Serenade in A Major by Christian Sinding. The best NSO Prelude link for the performance seems to be here.
(Brahms Vn Son #2, Pearlman, Askhenazi, symphony7526 channel)
Brahms: The last movement is an 'Allegretto grazioso':
Sinding:
Amy Bastian performs a movement from the Sinding Serenade Op 33 #4)
(Posted: Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 9 AM EST}