Ravinia 2025 Issue 3

PAVILION 7:30 PM FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2025 CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MARIN ALSOP, conductor CHICAGO SYMPHONY CHORUS DONALD PALUMBO, director JANAI BRUGGER, soprano # SASHA COOKE, mezzo-soprano # MAHLER Symphony No. 2 in C minor (“Resurrection”) I. Allegro maestoso. Mit durchaus ernstem und feierlichem Ausdruck (“Totenfeier”) The composer indicates in the score: “Here follows a pause of at least five minutes.” II. Andante moderato. Sehr gemächlich. Nicht eilen III. In ruhig fließender Bewegung IV. Urlicht: Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht (Choralmässig) Sasha Cooke V. Im Tempo des Scherzo: Wild herausfahrend— Allegro energico—Langsam misterioso (after Klopstock’s hymn “Die Auferstehung”) Janai Brugger; Sasha Cooke; Chicago Symphony Chorus There is no intermission in this program. # Steans Institute alum The Chicago Symphony Chorus’s appearance is made possible in part by the Jim & Kay Mabie Guest Artist Fund . GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911) Symphony No. 2 in C minor (“Resurrection”) Scored for four flutes and piccolos, four oboes and two English horns, three B-flat clarinets, two E-flat clarinets, and one bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, ten horns (four used offstage), eight to ten trumpets (four to six used offstage), four trombones, tuba, timpani (two players, each with three drums, plus one drum placed offstage), two bass drums (one onstage and one offstage), military drum, triangle, cymbals, high tam-tam, low tam- tam, rute, glockenspiel, three low bells of indeterminate pitch, two harps, organ, strings, alto and soprano soloists, and mixed chorus Gustav Mahler described the emotional force of his Symphony No. 2 in a letter to Arnold Berliner on January 31, 1895: “The whole thing sounds as though it came to us from some oth- er world. And—I think there is no one who can resist it.—One is battered to the ground and then raised on angels’ wings to the highest heights.” Of his nine completed symphonies—a 10th remained unfinished at the composer’s death—Mahler maintained a special affection for the second. Obsessed with mounting a flawless first performance, he offered to finance additional expenses for supplemental instru- mentalists, extra rehearsals, and the construc- tion of appropriately majestic-sounding or- chestral bells out of his own pocket. Toward the end of his career, Mahler often chose this sym- phony to mark significant professional events: his farewell concert in Vienna (November 24, 1907) before leaving for the United States, the first symphony he conducted in the US (December 8, 1908), and the first of his own works he conducted in Paris (April 17, 1910). Mahler labored nearly seven years over the Symphony No. 2. Its first creative phase over- lapped with the completion of the Symphony No. 1 (originally called a “symphonic poem,” then “Titan,” and ultimately designated his First Symphony). In 1888, Mahler composed a massive orchestral depiction of a funeral rite—the Totenfeier . Years later, he revealed its relationship to his earlier symphony in a let- ter to critic Max Marschalk: “It may interest you to know that it is the hero of my D-major symphony who is being borne to his grave, his life being reflected, as in a clear mirror, from a point of vantage.” Completed in Prague on September 10, this piece provoked haunting nightmares in the composer, who imagined himself lying in a coffin surrounded by flowers and funeral wreaths. Mahler added no further music to the Totenfeier for five more years. Anxious to receive the opinion of the highly re- garded director of the Hamburg Philharmonic, Mahler played through his Totenfeier at the pia- no for Hans von Bülow in 1891. Bülow’s reaction offered no encouragement: “When I played my Totenfeier to him, he became quite hysterical with horror, declaring that, compared with my piece, [Wagner’s highly chromatic] Tristan was a RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 71