The “composition hut” in Carinthia where Mahler worked on his fifth symphony (photograph by OboeCrack, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)
According to my records, the Live from Orchestra Hall video series presented by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) concluded last season with a program consisting only of Gustav Mahler’s ninth symphony, led by Music Director Jader Bignamini. Early yesterday evening, my wife and I had our first opportunity of the new season to return to Orchestra Hall through cyberspace. Once again, Mahler was the focus of the program, which was devoted almost entirely to his fifth symphony in C-sharp minor. This was the second half of the program, whose first half was a much shorter symphony, Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken I/100 in G major, often known as the “Military” symphony.
As was the case with his ninth symphony, the fifth is a product of richly diverse instrumentation. For the most part, the video work could not have provided better guidance in allowing the viewer to trace how an extended theme would peregrinate from one set of instruments to another (often with a plethora of opportunities, even if they were brief, to pay attention to individual performers). Thus, while the camera work gave a generous account of how Bignamini led his ensemble, the “heart of the matter” could be found in the diversity of instrumentation. In that respect, the attentive listener was probably better informed of the full scope of that diversity by following the video work than by enjoying a seat in Orchestra Hall.
Beyond the instrumentation, however, there is also the symmetry of structure. The symphony is in five movements grouped into three parts. The “middle part” is the third and longest movement. (Indeed, it may be one of the longest movements in the overall symphonic repertoire, even if Mahler himself composed longer ones!) The first part consists of two movements, both with funereal rhetoric, even if only the first of the movements is explicitly denoted as a funeral march. The final part begins with the shortest movements, the Adagietto, which serves as a “calm before the final storm.” That “final storm” is a rondo form, which begins playfully enough and just keeps building up in intensity. It is no wonder that listeners come away from a performance feeling as if they have just left a wild ride!
Hoboken I/100 is one of Haydn’s last and better-known symphonies. The title reflects on the second movement being structured as a parade march. Indeed, the last time I encountered this music was with the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony. On that occasion, the brass and percussion players did parade across the front of the stage. The DSO performance was more straightforward, but it was still clear that Haydn approached his “military” rhetoric with a twinkle in his eye!
Unless I am mistaken, this was not the first time I encountered a coupling of Haydn and Mozart. I find those occasions to be particularly satisfying. Both of them had a keen knowledge of the breadth of instruments at their command. For the most part, neither of them shied away from intense attention to structure on both the short and the long scale. Ironically, the Mahler biographies I have encountered have little (if anything) to say about Haydn. (His name never shows up on Mahler’s Wikipedia page.)
In any event I now find myself looking forward to which Mahler symphony Bignamini will choose for his next undertaking, and it will not surprise me if he couples it with another Haydn symphony!
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