Romantic Concert blahahaha
Why You Shouldn't Miss It
Grant Harville's final season conducting with us hits a crescendo on the glorious "Resurrection Symphony."
Two fabulous soloists and our Symphonic Choir will help Grant close out his tenure with this monumental work––a favorite since his teenage years.
Join us for a reception after the concert to wish our Maestro a fond farewell.
Ilana Setapen VIOLA
BY GRANT HARVILLE
PROGRAM NOTES
Symphony No. 2
"Resurrection"
1894
Gustav Mahler
1860 – 1911
80 MINUTES
Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”) has a way of messing with people’s heads. Composer Alban Berg, during a hearing of the fifth and final movement, felt that “in all the world there were nothing left but this music” (and immediately confessed infidelity to his lover). Conductor Simon Rattle describes wandering around in a daze after hearing the piece for the first time at age 11. Economist Gilbert Kaplan “walked out a different person” after hearing the piece for the first time – so he learned to read music, took conducting lessons, and rented an orchestra and concert hall in order to conduct a private performance of the work. Later, he would purchase Mahler’s original manuscript score – having a nine-figure net worth has its perks.
I do not have a nine-figure net worth, and at age 11, I would have been bored to tears by Mahler 2’s 80-minute run time. But it’s fair to say that this symphony spoke to me in a unique way as well, as it has done for so many others. The first time I ever had the opportunity to write a college paper on whatever musical work I wanted, Mahler 2 was the piece I chose. As I complete my tenure with the GFSA, I can’t imagine a more appropriate piece with which to do so.
The widespread adoption of recording technology beginning in the early 20th century changed music in many fundamental ways: how it’s heard, performed, disseminated, composed, marketed, evaluated, and so on. One profound consequence has been that performers could now put down their work in tangible form, allowing for the posthumous recognition previously only available to composers. Had Mahler not died prematurely, at age 50 in 1911, he might have put some of his performances on disc, as his contemporary Toscanini did so often, and he thus might be remembered in death the way he was thought of in life: arguably the greatest conductor of his day, who just happened to write symphonies in his spare time.
Mahler had perhaps the first modern “jet-setting” conducting career, moving from job to job throughout continental Europe and eventually making his way across the Atlantic for a stint with the New York Philharmonic at the end of his life. He generally reserved his composing time for the more relaxed summer months, when he would find a shack in some picturesque location and take inspiration from the surroundings. Mahler composed Totenfeier (Funeral Rite) – the piece that would become the first movement of the Second Symphony – in 1888, during an apprentice-like period in Leipzig where he conducted opera extensively as a subordinate to Arthur Nikisch. But the bulk of the Symphony No. 2 would be conceived in a hut in an Alpine village on the shore of the Attersee over two years in the mid-1890s.
Continues next column
Much ink has been spilled over what Mahler’s music “means,” and for good reason. Even ignoring the sung text many of his works have, the music is full of “signifiers” – archetypal musical tropes that point to non-musical things: funeral marches, militaristic fanfares, birdcalls, traditional dances high- and low-brow, and liturgical chorales. When you add the sung text back in and layer the whole of it with a healthy dose of self-quotation, the fact that Mahler’s symphonies possess meaning becomes all too obvious, while the precise nature of that meaning remains tantalizingly obscure. That said, Mahler’s 2nd may be the most forthright, at least in its broad strokes. If nothing else, given how the piece opens and closes, it justifies quite clearly its appellation “Resurrection.”
As mentioned, the Second Symphony’s opening movement is a funeral rite, alternating between a despondent gravity and gentle beauty, with snippets of the Roman Catholic Dies irae hymn invoking the requiem mass. The second movement, in a supreme contrast, is a mostly, though not entirely, gentle triple-time dance. (Mahler famously felt that this movement was too light to follow the weighty opening movement and suggested that a break of five minutes’ silence be inserted between the two: We will not be doing this in our performance.) The third movement scherzo veers from the rustic (high clarinet and a German folk percussion instrument called a Rute) to the beautifully serene to the violently brash.
The complexities and eclecticism of the first three movements depart as the alto soloist enters for movement four. The poem “Urlicht” (approximately “Primordial Light”) conveys as direct a message as one might find in a Mahler work: “Man lies in greatest pain! How I would rather be in heaven … I am from God and shall return from God!” Whatever comfort may be gleaned from this is rudely destroyed, Beethoven’s Ninth-style, by the merciless crash of the opening of the fifth and final movement. And even though this quickly yields to calmer pastures, it’s immediately clear that the aspirations of “Urlicht” will not be realized without doing some significant musical work. Fragments from earlier movements return, including the Dies irae, as if it is necessary to reexamine them in order to move past them. Finally the choir and soprano soloist join in: “You were not born in vain, have not lived in vain, suffered in vain … I shall mount to the light to which no sight has penetrated. I will die, so as to live.”
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GUEST ARTIST
Ilani Setapen
VIOLIN
Ilana Setapen Since her solo orchestral debut at age 15, Ilana Setapen has been flourishing as a violinist with a powerful and original voice. She is hailed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as a violinist with “a sparkling sound” and “the kind of control that puts an audience completely at ease.” She is currently the First Associate Concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
In recent seasons, Setapen has had solo performances with the Milwaukee Symphony, Festival City Symphony, and the Amarillo Symphony, among others. She also held the Assistant Concertmaster position of the Grant Park Music Festival Orchestra in Chicago for 6 years and is a favorite guest concertmaster with the Chicago Philharmonic. In recent summers, she has performed at the Olympic Music Festival on Bainbridge Island and the Lakes Area Music Festival in Brainerd, Minnesota. She is currently on the violin faculty at Chicago Summer Opera and at the University of Michigan’s Center Stage Strings.
As a committed chamber musician, Setapen is in demand as a collaborator throughout the Midwest. She performs frequently with Present Music. Her talent has led her to collaborations with such distinguished artists as Ron Leonard, Lynn Harrell, Toby Appel, Cynthia Phelps, Joseph Kalichstein, Robert DeMaine, Paul Coletti, the Fine Arts Quartet, David Geber, Joan Tower, and Chris Thile. Solo and chamber music performances have brought her abroad to China, France, Brazil, Holland, England, Monaco, and Italy.
Setapen grew up in Amarillo, Texas. Her father is a conductor and her first violin teacher was her mother. She was a student of Robert Lipsett both at the University of Southern California and at the Colburn Conservatory. She received her Master of Music Degree from the Juilliard School as a student of Donald Weilerstein and Ronald Copes. She is also a dedicated educator and has a thriving private studio. In her spare time, Setapen enjoys spending time with her husband and their two sons and swing dancing.