The heavenly joy that has no end

Words from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, sung in Mahler's Third Symphony.

In four hours we depart for Dresden, where the very active American musician living in Köln, Camilla Hoitenga, will perform the flute version of my work, Way of Light, for video and electronics. I’m excited, as this will be the first time it’s performed with flute (it was written for trumpet), and Camilla is a world-class performer. The venue is the Hygiene Museum, and Camilla's concert, called "Syrinx," is one of the opening concerts of the Dresdner Musikfestspiele.

A couple of evenings back I was lucky enough to find someone selling a standing room only ticket to the Vienna Philharmonic’s performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony---his homage, or hymn, to the natural world. Imagine standing for nearly two hours, 10 people deep and 15 or 20 across, with no support. Something akin to a packed subway car stalled for who knows how long...except that Mahler’s music wafting through one of the most divine acoustic and visual concert spaces in the world makes the sardine experience quite something else. As the photo I took right after the concert shows, the large hall of the Musikverein is in fact a remarkably intimate space. The orchestra was crammed into every nook and corner for the performance, with some audience members literally inches away from musicians.

The prolific, feisty, and incredibly energetic composer Nancy Van de Vate, who resides in Austria and who I shared a delightful evening with yesterday, informed me that the the subscription tickets for these concerts are inherited...which explains their scarcity. She also told me that some 1500 people are on a multi-year waiting list for subscriptions to the Vienna Philharmonic concerts.

The first of six movements, alone, is about 35 minutes. The large forces include women’s chorus and boys’ choir, both deployed in the fifth movement, as well as a solo mezzo soprano. The mischievous clarinetist captured the grotesque fantastical qualities that Mahler is so fond of , and the contrabasses, at times, sounded as though they were performing a much more contemporary work, evoking crunchy noise-infused textures. Elĩna Garanča, was the mezzo soprano, and Semyon Bychkov conducted. The famous last long chord blanketed the audience with sheer bliss. After some moments of silence, ferociously appreciative applause poured forth, and rightly so, as the performance was superb.

By the way, Tony Duggan's thorough review of this conductor's recording of Mahler's Third, with the WDR Symphony Orchestra on the Avie label, can be found here (along with his reviews of most if not all of the Mahler symphonies). Scroll down to the very bottom of the page to find it.