I still recall my hearing two live performances of Mahler’s Third Symphony. One performance was in London; the second took place at the Aspen Music Festival. Both were unforgettable.
Now, many years later, I frequently skip the “Part 1”. I have heard the “Summer Marches in” so many times, ad I am eager to hear Mahler’s musical description of Nature, and the sounds of the Cuckoo, as well as the wonderful children’s choir!
The opening movement, is a series of marches. It begins, after an introductory fanfare, with a heavy, menacing one whose texture is dominated by the horns, trombones, and trumpets. Mahler described the effect of this opening to his friend, Ms. Bauer-Lechner: “Over the introduction to this movement, there lies again that atmosphere of brooding summer midday heat; not a breath stirs, all life is suspended, and the sun-drenched air trembles and vibrates.”
Mahler calls for a long pause after the exhausting first movement. The second movement minuet opens with a delicate melody designated for the oboe that is, in Mahler’s words, treated to “ever-richer variation.” In the course of these variations, brief moments of frantic activity break out, but these are always eventually subsumed into the minuet’s predominating refined texture.
With the third movement, we begin the transition from daylight to darkness, from the meadow, bathed in sunshine, to the depth of night, glowing in shimmering moonlight. Here we are in the shadows of the forest, teeming with life.
We arrive at night with the fourth movement. Here, Mahler builds an entire movement from the combination of alternating notes in the orchestra, which creates a slow rocking feeling, and a simple but powerful melody for the mezzo-soprano soloist.
I love the fifth movement which uses the same rocking device, this time in the children’s chorus, which imitates the pealing of bells (“bimm, bamm”) over the orchestra and the women’s chorus.
It is tempting to argue that the final Adagio somehow “represents” Mahler’s vision of heaven. An early version of this movement was titled “What love tells me,” a designation open to interpretation and one that may or may not have anything to do with heaven. In the case of the Adagio, it speaks with an eloquent voice. The movement draws together the separate strands of the five movements that precede it into a profound utterance of serene power and beauty, a staggering conclusion unlike anything Mahler had written before.
Here is a complete performance of this masterpiece conducted by Claudio Abbado:
