Andris Nelsons and BSO Open Tanglewood Season with Weekend of Mahler

Andris Nelsons (photo Marco Borggreve)

(LENOX, Mass.) – Music Director Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra open the BSO’s 2017 Tanglewood season with a gala performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, on Friday, July 7, at 8pm. Nelsons returns to the Shed podium for his second concert of the season on Sunday, July 9, at 2:30pm, for an afternoon program featuring 16-year-old Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich in his BSO and Tanglewood debuts performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3. The program also includes Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. On Saturday, July 8, at 8pm, Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops perform the symphonic version of Sondheim on Sondheim, featuring a cast of acclaimed Broadway performers.

At approximately 85 minutes and calling for an oversized orchestra in addition to the numerous vocal forces, Mahler’s Second Symphony shakes the rafters and stirs the soul, demonstrating Mahler’s ultra-Romantic musical language as well as the intense spirituality ever-present at the core of his work. Soprano Malin Christensson (in her Tanglewood debut) and mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink join Nelsons and the orchestra, along with the all-volunteer Tanglewood Festival Chorus, prepared by the recently appointed conductor James Burton, who actively takes up his new duties as Tanglewood Festival Chorus Conductor beginning with this program.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, cast in five movements, is a monumental work that addresses equally weighty subjects: life, suffering, death, and the uncertainty of what comes after. Like Beethoven before him, Mahler uses sung text in his symphony to directly explore some of these ideas. Completed in 1894, the Symphony No. 2 is the first of three consecutive symphonies to contain vocal elements with text taken from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn ), a collection of German folk poems that was a popular source of inspiration for musicians and artists throughout the 19th century. In the case of the Resurrection Symphony, Mahler bases the fourth movement, a spellbinding number for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, on a poem called “Urlicht” (“Primal Light”), which tells of a child’s soul longing to escape earthly pain.

The fifth and final movement — at more than 30 minutes, the longest of the five — is an emotionally exhausting tour de force, both apocalyptic and serene. Finally calling upon the chorus, the finale is based on an amalgamated text, partially taken from Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s “Resurrection Ode” and partially Mahler’s own, and provides an earth-shaking conclusion to the symphony as well as a window into the composer’s personal spiritual convictions. Explaining the events depicted in the final glorious moments, Mahler wrote, “Rise again, yes, rise again thou wilt … Lo and behold: There is no judgment, no sinners, no just men, no great and no small; there is no punishment and no reward. A feeling of overwhelming love fills us with blissful knowledge and illuminates our existence.”

 

Malin Christensson

Friday, July 7, 8 p.m. Shed

Opening Night at Tanglewood

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Andris Nelsons, conductor

Malin Christensson, soprano

Bernarda Fink, mezzo-soprano

Tanglewood Festival Chorus,

James Burton, conductor

MAHLER Symphony No. 2, Resurrection

 

 

On Saturday, July 8, at 8 p.m., Tanglewood presents the symphonic version of Sondheim on Sondheim with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops. Hailed as “a funny, affectionate, and revealing tribute to musical theater’s greatest living composer and lyricist,” Sondheim on Sondheim is a retrospective of the life and work of Stephen Sondheim, told through his own words via film, live performers, and his music. With the support of Stephen Sondheim and show creator James Lapine, the popular Broadway show’s ten-piece pit orchestra arrangements have been reworked into new arrangements for full symphony orchestra. Directed by Sarna Lapine, with musical director David Loud, the July 8 concert will feature a cast of acclaimed Broadway performers including Phillip Boykin, Carmen Cusack, Gabriel Ebert, and Ruthie Ann Miles, as well as Vocal Fellows from the 2017 Tanglewood Music Center class, including Fotina Naumenko, Katherine Beck, Daniel McGrew, and William Socolof.

 

Kristine Opolais (photo Tatyana Vlasova)

Andris Nelsons returns to the Shed podium for his second concert of the season on Sunday, July 9, at 2:30 p.m., for an afternoon program featuring 16-year-old Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich in his BSO and Tanglewood debuts performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3. The program also includes Nelsons’ second Mahler symphony of the weekend — Symphony No. 4, the most delicate of his nine completed works in the form. Soprano Kristine Opolais, who has made several acclaimed appearances with the BSO and at Tanglewood in recent seasons, joins as soloist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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