Emperor & Titan: Mahler 1

This coming weekend October 18th and 19th the Glacier Symphony will open its 43rd concert season with a spectacular concert featuring music by Beethoven, Mahler and Grammy award-winning composer Jessie Montgomery. I'm John Zoltek music director and conductor. I’ll be leading the Glacier Symphony in this memorable concert with two popular and significant works from the repertoire, the Beethoven Emperor Piano Concerto #5 in E flat major featuring acclaimed pianist Alon Goldstein and the emotionally dynamic and thoroughly engaging Symphony No.1 in D major the “Titan” by Gustav Mahler. Also on the programme will be Jesse Montgomery’s “Hymn for Everyone,” a work composed during the pandemic and commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 2021.

Our concert opens with Jessie Montgomery’s “Hymn for Everyone,” a lyrical and contemplative work that takes the listener on a meditative journey as the composer moves a solemn hymn-like motive through variations of orchestral colour and instrumental sections of the orchestra moving slowly and march-like towards a searching and questioning conclusion.

Internationally acclaimed pianist Alon Goldstein will be featured in what is perhaps Beethoven's greatest and most popular Piano Concerto, the “Emperor.” This 3-movement work is quintessential “Heroic Period” Beethoven from its dynamic and triumphant themes to its inward, tender and solitary music, finally culminating in an unbridled dance-like finale. The technical and artistic demands on the solo pianist are considerable and the interaction between piano and orchestra are seamless and at times profound. Guest pianist Alon Goldstein is an audience favourite from past appearances with Glacier Symphony and Festival Amadeus and will bring his considerable artistry to this magnificent concerto by Beethoven composed in 1809 at the pinnacle of his powers.

The concert will conclude with Mahler's Symphony No.1 in D major, the “Titan.” Our performance of this Symphony No. 1 will be the first of three Mahler symphonies offered this season and will be followed in February by Mahler’s massive and universal Symphony No. 3 in February and spiritually thrilling “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2 in May.

The Symphony No. 1 by Mahler, is first in his series of nine complete symphonies which has universally established Mahler as one of the most significant composers of symphonies over the past century.

Composed in the late 1880s, the work is expansive in both duration and orchestral forces, requiring a large orchestra, including 18 horns and brass and triple and quadruple winds, which at times is used fully for ultimate dynamic power and at other times sparingly as chamber music.

The Symphony is written in the traditional 4 movement form, its foundation built upon on the architecture and development of the Austrian German symphonic tradition. But the uniqueness of Mahler’s symphonic voice, already present in this first symphony, was unusually inventive and almost radical for the time, incorporating a varied mix of musical languages and styles from the classical/romantic tradition as well as rural Czech Austrian folk music and 19th century popular idioms. The Symphony moves along in a narratively subjective direction illuminating at times the beauty of nature and innocence to the exuberance of life itself and sentimental heartbreak – mortality is also expressed in a strange funeral music parody utilising a children's song “Brother Martin” as its theme – finally concluding in the ultimate heroic struggle between good and evil that ends triumphantly in the last movement.

The Symphony No. 1 by Mahler really needs to be experienced live in concert to feel the full impact of this psychologically deeply human and dynamic music.

Don't miss the spectacular opening concert coming up this weekend! I look forward to seeing you in McClaren Hall at the Wachholz College Center, in Kalispell.

Thanks for listening.