Conflicted Genius
Mahler's music is replete with spirituality and love of nature
regardless of his religious affiliations.
DIANA LIEBERMAN
Copy Editor/Entertainment Writer
I
am thrice homeless, as.a native
of Bohemia in Austria, as an
Austrian among Germans, and
as -a Jew throughout the world.
Everywhere an intruder, never wel-
comed."
These are the words of
composer/conductor Gustav Mahler,
written to his wife, Alma, as he strug-
gled with the musical establishment of
his adopted home of Hamburg.
Born in 1860 in the Bohemian
town of Kaliste in the Austro-
Hungarian Empire. Mahler converted
to Catholicism in 1896. That was the
same year he completed the longest of
his 10 symphonies, the Symphony No.
Gustav Mahler:
Caught between
a sensuous love of
the world and an acute
consciousness of death.
-owee**04,00
•
9/13
2002
86
3 in D Minor.
Neeme Jarvi, conductor of the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, has
chosen Mahler's Third Symphony
for his return to the DSO podium
for the 2002-2003 classical con-
cert season. Performances will
take place 8 p.m. Thursday and
Friday and 8:30 p.m. Saturday,
Sept. 19-21, at the Detroit
Opera House.
In addition to a 110-piece
orchestra, the Third Symphony
includes parts for women's
chorus, children's choir and
alto soloist. For the DSO per-
formances, these roles will be
filled by the women of the
University Musical Society
Choral Union, members of
the boys and girls choirs of
Christ Church Grosse Pointe
and alto Nancy Maultsby.
"This is one of the great
symphonies, over 80 minutes of
consecutive music. The first
movement alone is longer than
most major symphonies in their
entirety," said Chandler Cudlipp,
DSO director of artistic planning.
"The orchestra has an obligation
to perform major symphonic
repertoire, regardless of the era it
was written in," he said. "But, in the
case of Mahler, it's a labor of love for
Maestro Jarvi."
The Third Symphony is "the most
original thing Mahler ever wrote, a
great hymn to nature," said Charles
Greenwell, DSO conducting assistant.
"At one point, he wanted to call it
Pan: A Symphonic Poem."
The six-movement symphony
"begins with nature and goes on to
love of the Almighty," said Greenwell,
who presents programs about each
subscription concert one hour before
the concert begins (except for Friday
Coffee Concerts).
Interestingly, the mammoth first
movement was the last composed, he
said, which may explain why each of
the succeeding movements contains
thematic fragments from the first.
While some scholars and musicians
see unmistakable "Jewish" elements in
Mahler's compositions, Cudlipp said
he'd call them "more folkloristic than
religious."
"The Third Symphony describes in
a physical way what is essentially a
journey of the spirit," he said.
Said the composer about the exhaus-
tive work: "My symphony will be
something the likes of which the
world has never yet heard! ... In it all
of nature finds a voice."
A Matter Of Expediency
Mahler, the oldest surviving child of_
12, spent his early years in the town of
Iglau, where his family moved when
he was an infant.
Iglau housed a military garrison,
and, according to family lore, the
young Gustav could play on an accor-
dion all the march tunes used in the
neighboring barracks by the time he
was 4 years old.
Mahler's father, Bernhard, the owner
of a brandy distillery, was among the
founders of the synagogue. One of his
great-grandfathers was a noted schochet
(ritual slaughterer).
Although brought up in a Jewish