Edo de Waart continues Masterworks series

19 July 2016

Edo de Waart continues Masterworks series with Strauss and Mahler 4

The NZSO continues its exciting series of Masterworks with acclaimed Music Director Edo de Waart.

This time, the Orchestra presents Strauss’ Four Last Songs and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

I haven’t conducted some of these works for a long time, so it’s nice to revisit my old friends. These composers had the extraordinary ability to be unbelievably mature in their view of what music was and what life was all about, just like Michelangelo and da Vinci and Shakespeare.

Edo de Waart, NZSO Music Director

Richard Strauss was 84 when he composed his final work Four Last Songs and despite his ‘retirement’ in 1941, he spent much of his final years writing some of his most moving music. Composed after the Second World War in 1948, Four Last Songs, is a meditation on the beautiful moments that life can offer, including the brilliance of love.

Inspired by Joseph Eichendorff’s poem Im Abendrot, which the composer read in 1947, it describes a couple that have walked through life together and now face their own death. The work could be a reflection of Strauss and his wife Pauline’s life, who, despite spending 50 years together in a rather tumultuous marriage, remained deeply in love.

Sadly, neither Strauss nor Pauline heard the songs performed. Richard Strauss died in his sleep on 8 September 1949 and Pauline died on 13 May 1950, only nine days before Four Last Songs premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Soprano Christiane Libor makes her debut with the NZSO in these moving orchestral songs. Born in Berlin, Ms. Libor studied at the Musikhochschule für Musik Hans Eissler and she has worked with many of the world’s most respected conductors. She has sung a wide range of leading dramatic soprano parts including the title role of Ariadne auf Naxos at Seattle Opera and Opera Stuttgart, Fidelio in Dresden, Senta inDer fliegende Holländer at the Washington National Opera, and she has sung both Sieglinde and Brünnhilde in Die Walküre with Oper Leipzig.

Ms Libor will also sing in the other concert masterwork, Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, the ideal continuation from Maestro de Waart’s acclaimed inaugural performance as the NZSO Music Director of Mahler’s momentous Third Symphony in April.

Overall this was a superb, life enhancing performance, one that Mahler’s inspired creation deserved.
John Button, Dominion Post, Mahler 3, April 2016.

In many ways, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony must have been a baffling follow up from his Symphony No. 3 when it premiered as these two symphonies appear to be opposites. Symphony No. 3 (composed between 1893 and 1896) is huge, with music scored for children’s choir, women’s choir, mezzo-soprano soloist and a full orchestra, whereas Symphony No. 4 (composed in 1899 and 1900) is scored for a modest orchestra, with no trombones or tuba, and a soprano soloist.

Despite the obvious differences, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 deeply informs the Fourth. Mahler was an expert at re-purposing themes across his works and this is evident in these consecutive symphonies. “If you want to call yourself a Mahler Orchestra, then his Symphony No. 4 is very much at the centre of that”, says Mahler specialist Edo de Waart.

With Maestro de Waart from the podium, this performance of Mahler Symphony No. 4 with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra will be a very special listening experience.

Having been with the NZSO a number of times now, it is wonderful, after my first bow, to turn around and know you have worked together and know each other, and there is a deep sense that we can do this together. Edo de Waart, NZSO Music Director

More about Maestro Edo de Waart >

ENDS

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