On Nov. 16, the 70th anniversary of the Portland Youth Symphony Orchestra will be celebrated with a performance of Mahler’s monumental Symphony No. 3 at Merrill Auditorium.

One rarely gets to hear this symphony live because of its length (about 100 minutes), and the demands that it makes upon orchestra and chorus.

Conductor Robert Lehmann speculates that at the time of its first performance in 1902, it may have been the loudest thing that European audiences had ever experienced.

Add to the rarity an admission price of “by donation,” and it becomes truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for both adults and children.

The performance pools the resources of the University of Southern Maine’s School of Music, which has administered the Portland Youth Ensemble programs for more than 15 years.

It will feature the Portland Youth Symphony Orchestra joined by the Southern Maine Symphony Orchestra (the USM student/community orchestra), the women of the USM Chorale, the Southern Maine Children’s Chorus, Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano and USM alumna Teresa Herold, USM faculty and youth orchestra alumni.

The resources it requires include at least eight French horns, six trumpets, six clarinets, off-stage percussion and brass, an expanded string section, a women’s choir, a children’s choir and a mezzo-soprano soloist.

One of the reasons for choosing Mahler’s Third is that almost all of the musicians were immediately available at USM, Lehmann said. In spite of its length, it is not one of Mahler’s most difficult works, and is well within the capacity of a good student symphony orchestra supplemented by faculty members such as John Boden, horn, and Betty Rines, trumpet and post-horn.

I love the Mahler Third because it contains some of the composer’s most appealing songs, including some from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” Its length stems from Mahler’s desire to “describe the entire universe in 500 words and give two examples” in the language of that legendary final exam.

It begins with the arduous birth of summer, which takes 45 minutes (even when spurred on by the great god Pan), leading to a middle section and finale consisting of five movements of rising spirituality: “What the flowers in the meadow tell me; What the forest creatures tell me; What Man tells me (setting a poem by Nietzche);  What the morning bells/angels tell me; What love/God tells me.”

Mahler intended to add a seventh section describing life in heaven, but thought better of it, using it as the final movement of the Symphony No. 4 instead.

The final 30-minute adagio, “What love tells me,” resolves the questionable tonality of the entire symphony — D minor or D major — in what Lehmann calls “the most glorious spiritual journey from darkness to light ever penned.”

Mahler himself, in a letter to a female friend, wrote: “Try to conceive a work so vast that the entire world is mirrored … These are fearful birth pains the creator of such a work suffers, and before all this builds itself up and ferments in his brain, it must be preceded by much preoccupation, engrossment with self, a being dead to the outer world.

“My symphony will be something the world has not yet heard! In it, all nature becomes a voice and reveals profound mysteries as one has perhaps surmised only in dreams.”

(He was trying to tell her why he was so difficult to live with.)

To Bruno Walter, he wrote  that “those who enjoy the pleasant strolls I offer will find them fun.”

Go to Merrill Auditorium on Nov. 16 and see for yourself which it is.

Christopher Hyde is a writer and musician who lives in Pownal, He can be reached at:

classbeat@netscape.net

 

Copy the Story Link