Opening Night at Tanglewood: MTT & Mahler
“In the “Resurrection” poem by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, with Mahler’s added verses, the always impressive Tanglewood Festival Chorus (directed by John Oliver) sang with robust sound and sensitivity. Despite the humidity, which can wreak havoc on pitch, the Boston Symphony played like the great orchestra it is.”
- Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times
Opening night of the summer BSO season was one of the most exciting performances I’ve had to date. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas breathed life into Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony that brought about the folk-y, soulful and theatrical story from the separate first movement “Todtenfeier” (funeral celebration) to the languid vocal phrases in the “Urlicht” (primal light — evocative of the afterlife for the hero in Mahler’s first symphony). The chorus doesn’t sing except for the final movement “Die Auferstehung” (the resurrection) in collaboration with the soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, which allowed us most of the symphony to take in Tilson Thomas’ evocative directions from the podium — such a treat!
(photo by Michael Lutch of the New York Times)
As we sang only the final movement (with many seasoned performers in the chorus), our rehearsals were brief with most time devoted to independent study, so the performance delivered an unexpected and emotional momentum from our final collaboration. Our entrance with mezzo-soprano soloist Stephanie Blythe on “Aufersteh’n” (to resurrect) was hushed and blended — no small feat for 130 singers — and we grew through the fugue “mit Fluegeln werde ich entschweben” (with wings I will float to the heavens) and the final “Sterben werd’ ich um zu leben” (I will die in order to live) brought a forceful coda that almost doesn’t want to end.
Mahler, himself, recalled“The increasing tension, working up to the final climax, is so tremendous that I don’t know myself, now that it is over, how I ever came to write it.”
Two weeks later, I’m still breathless.
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Listen to more on Mahler’s life, death and his legacy on this fascinating episode of NPR’s Studio 360.
