STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Get ready for the famous Hammer—well, three of them, actually. And a couple “chords of chaos,” as well, when the Sun Valley Music Festival performs Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in A Minor Sunday night at the Sun Valley Pavilion.
Mahler, who lived from 1860 to 1911, wrote nine symphonies and he started writing a tenth in superstitious hopes of averting the early death of other people who died after writing nine. But he never finished the tenth before his own death, said Sun Valley Music Festival Director Alasdair Neale.
His wife Alma Mahler asserted that his “Tragic” symphony was prophetic, with the three hammers in the piece foreshadowing him being fired, his eldest daughter dying of scarlet fever and his own diagnosis of heart problems which led to his death.
Just how the Tragic Symphony, as Gustav Mahler called it, came about is anyone’s guess, said Neale, who doesn’t necessarily ascribe to Alma’s beliefs.
“Creativity is what it is and Mahler is no exception,” said Neale, adding that he knows of only one other symphony that ended so darkly.
Mahler’s first four symphonies followed the typical song cycles of the day, and his Fifth was purely musical. But the Sixth features a complexity of sounds “so you can be forgiven if your mind feels like it’s getting pulled in different directions,” Neale told those attending an Upbeat with Alasdair lecture Friday at Ketchum’s Community Library.
Mahler was an extremely busy, driven man, a brilliant autocratic driven conductor, who worked in a viper nest of politics at his conducting post in Vienna, Neale said.
Each summer he retreated to a small hut in the Austrian Alps where he penned four of his symphonies from 1901 to 1907, including his Sixth. At the time he wrote the Sixth he was enjoying the happiest period of his life, married to a beautiful dynamo of a woman and enjoying the company of two young daughters.
The 80-minute symphony he composed in 1903 and 1904 opens with an aggressive military march, shifting from major to minor key frequently. It gives way to a thumbnail sketch of Alma Mahler’s irrepressible beauty and energy before shifting back to the military flavor.
A couple minutes later Mahler suddenly transplants listeners into the middle of the mountains, coaxing sounds of nature out of the orchestra, including a faint ring of cowbells.
“You know you’re in the Alps or, possibly, Sun Valley,” said Neale, who likened the shift to having Google Earth whoosh music lovers up, setting them down in the mountains.
The buildup from there to the coda is one of his favorite parts—a part he’s dubbed “Alma Triumphant.”
BUT, towards the end, he struck his chest, a dissonant chord signals 22 moments of what come. Mahler originally started the next section with a military beat, then switched to a quiet oboe solo.
“Many conductors, myself included, think that putting the military part first was the right one , he said as he described the skeletal laughter of a xylophone and the devilish drive contained in that part. “Good luck trying to find a pulse ore regular rhythm. Every measure has a different time.”
No one up until then had written anything with such an irregular pulse, he added: “It was kind of subversive.”
The last 22 minutes of the symphony, evokes T.S. Eliot’s line from “The Hollow Men”--“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” Neale said.
The final chapter is the longest, most complex and arduous of the journey.
A “chord of chaos” resolves every time in a way no one is expecting, and swirling harp crescendos abound like a malformed cosmic dust punctuated by distant church bells.
Neale likened it to being in a Haunted Halloween house with the crescendo like an encroaching army coming together building to a massive titanic struggle at the end.
Audience will be able to watch the percussionists getting ready for the famous hammer, which Mahler specified should be short and loud but dull-sounding and nonmetallic in character.
“We call it the big boom box of doom,” said Neale. “It’s the equivalent of putting your finger on a nuclear button… The second hammer provokes even wider chaos.”
At some point the music shifts as Mahler seems to be telling that he’s ending things on a good note.
But, in fact, it’s a terrifying end, said Neale.
Since Mahler wrote his Sixth, the world has seen two World Wars, two pandemics, a holocaust, a nuclear explosion and human-caused climate change.
“Mahler found a way to include all that,” he said. “He forces us to stare into the abyss.”
Asked how he could have done all that with just pen, paper and piano, Neale suggested that perhaps he was inspired by the enormity of the majestic surroundings.
“That’s genius for you.”
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
The Sun Valley Music Festival launched its second week of the season with a stunning concert of Classical Music’s Greatest Hits, including Johann Strauss Jr.’s “Blue Danube,’ Richard Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries,” and Maurice Ravel “Bolero.”
This week will launch with Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 and take fans through the always popular Pops Night showcasing the orchestra playing the score to “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” as the 2.5-hour movie rolls.
The free concerts start at 6:30 p.m. at the Sun Valley Pavilion.
Festival Orchestra
Sunday, August 11
Alasdair Neale, conductor
Mahler: Symphony No.6 in A Minor, “Tragic”
Festival Orchestra
Tuesday, August 13
Alasdair Neale, conductor
Stephanie Childress, conductor
Jeremy Constant, violin
Amos Yang, cello
Peter Henderson, piano
Jessie Montgomery: Strum
Beethoven: Concerto in C Major, Op. 56, “Triple”
Festival Orchestra
Wednesday, August 14
Alasdair Neale, conductor
Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Quinn Mason: A Joyous Trilogy
Brahms: Concerto in D Major for Violin, Op. 77
Festival Orchestra — Pops Night
Saturday, August 17
Vinay Parameswaran, conductor
Williams: Raiders of the Lost Ark Live in Concert
The performances, all free, start at 6:30 p.m. at the Sun Valley Pavilion and on the Sun Valley Pavilion lawn.