Midcoast Symphony to open season with Mozart and Mahler

LEWISTON — Music Director Rohan Smith will conduct the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra’s first concert series of the 2013-2014 season at 7:30 p.m. Saturday Oct. 19, at The Franco Center in Lewiston and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday Oct. 20, at the Orion Performing Arts Center in Topsham. The orchestra will perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C, (Jupiter), and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major (Titan).

Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 is the last of the final three symphonies he wrote, none of which (to the best of contemporary knowledge) were performed during the composer’s lifetime. Mozart did not himself entitle the symphony “Jupiter.” The name originated in Britain in the early 19th century, and this suggests that even Mozart’s near-contemporaries found the work particularly grand. The final movement of this symphony is perhaps one of the finest movements Mozart ever wrote.

Unlike Mozart, who wrote hundreds of works in all the genres available to him at the time, Mahler wrote relatively few, and the vast majority of these are orchestral works, either symphonies or orchestral works with voice. But the ones he did write are typically huge — huge in length and huge in the forces they require.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major, for example, asks for seven French horns (the norm is four) and four trumpets (the norm is two or three), as well as expanded woodwind and percussion. In addition, it is about an hour long.

However, the subtitle “Titan” is not about that hugeness. Rather, it is an early designation, given by Mahler himself, that reflects the work’s early connections with the romantic novelist Jean Paul’s 1803 novel “Titan,” which recounts the story of its hero’s growing up and quest for balance. Mahler rejected the title when he revised the work, but it seems to have stuck, as such things do.

Regardless, Mahler considered that this symphony contains all of life, from gentle spring whispers to village celebrations to massive, terrifying storms of sound. As Mahler himself observed after the completion of his Second Symphony, “My whole life is contained in my two symphonies. In them I have set down my experience and suffering, truth and poetry in words. To anyone who knows how to listen my whole life will become clear.”

All tickets to Midcoast Symphony are general admission, and everyone 18 and under is admitted free. Tickets are $20 each, and are available online at www.midcoastsymphony.org, by phone at 207-846-5378, at Gulf of Maine Books (Brunswick) or Now You’re Cooking (Bath) and at the door on the day of the concert (payment at the door is by cash or check only).

Copy the Story Link