Tragedy entwines with passages of great beauty and calm in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. Listen for the soaring “Alma theme” — a portrait of the composer’s wife — the sound of distant cowbells in alpine pastures. But in the last movement, listen for the hammer blows of fate, “the last of which fells [the hero] like the stroke of an axe,” Mahler said. He had originally indicated three strokes, but because of his superstitious nature, he eliminated one. Still, the number three turned out to be prophetic: his five-year old daughter Maria died of diphtheria, he resigned his post at the Vienna State Opera, and his life-threatening heart condition was diagnosed.
Join the Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov — “the performance sizzled” The New York Times said of their recent collaboration — for this tour de force.
Semyon Bychkov won the Rachmaninov Conducting Competition at age 20, but after being denied the prize of conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic, he left the former Soviet Union two years later. By the time he returned in 1989 to be principal guest conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic he had been recognized for his concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and had enjoyed success as music director of the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
THURSDAY @ 7:30 PM
FRIDAY & SATURDAY @ 8 PM
TUESDAY @ 7:30 PM
