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SCRUTINY | Soluna International Music & Arts Festival: Rare Mahler in Dallas

By Paul E. Robinson on June 4, 2016

Mahler's Das Klagende Lied in rehearsal at the Meyerson in Dallas (Photo: Paul E. Robinson)
Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied in rehearsal at the Meyerson in Dallas (Photo: Paul E. Robinson)

Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Jaap van Zweden at The Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas, TX, Saturday, May 28, 2016

DALLAS, TX — The Soluna Festival, now in its second season in Dallas, is clearly making a major contribution to the city’s cultural life. While the Dallas Symphony (DSO) is at the heart of the festival with several performances, dozens of other concerts, dance events and gallery shows are scheduled over a period of three weeks from May 16 to June 5. What makes this festival different from many others seems to be its fusion of the traditional and the modern. As Forbes.com put it, “SOLUNA bridges the gap between classical music and contemporary culture.”

The theme for the 2016 Soluna festival is “Myth and Legend.” While the program reviewed here, which coupled Copland and Mahler may not reflect “contemporary culture,” it certainly touched on myth and legend.

Das Klagende Lied, (The Plaintive Song), was one of Mahler’s earliest works. Only eighteen when he began to write it, he was still revising it 20 years later. Ultimately, the piece fell by the wayside and was only rediscovered in the 1960s. A fascinating choral symphony, if you will, it certainly deserves an occasional revival.

The teenaged Mahler submitted Das Klagende Lied to Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde’s 1881 Beethoven Competition, of which Johannes Brahms was one of the judges. The “Beethoven Composition Prize” for that year was awarded to a now forgotten work by a composer named Robert Fuchs (1847-1927). Today, Mahler is celebrated as one of the greatest of all composers. And who remembers Fuchs? Go figure.

Mahler initially conceived Das Klagende Lied as a work in three movements: 1) Waldmärchen (Forest Legend), Der Spielmann (The Minstrel), and 3) Hochzeitsstück (Wedding Piece). In 1893, he eliminated the first movement – by far the longest of the three, removed the off-stage band in Pt. 3, and reduced the number of harps required from six to two.  Perhaps the idea was to make it a more affordable piece to perform. In 1898, he made some final revisions. Four years later, he conducted a performance in the two-movement version – with the offstage band restored. Finally, in 1902, he published the piece as a two-movement work.

In this Soluna Festival performance of Das Klagende Lied, which turned out to be a deeply moving experience, Jaap van Zweden went back to Mahler’s original version, more or less; that is, a three-movement work complete with a large offstage band of more than 10 players and six harps.

Das Klagende Lied is an adaptation by Mahler of a folk tale by the Brothers Grimm, the story of a queen who promises marriage to the young knight who will bring her a certain flower from the forest. The “good” knight finds it, but while he is sleeping, he is killed by his brother, the “evil” knight. Later, a wandering minstrel finds a bone and carves a flute from it. The flute sings a “lamenting, accusing song” (klagende lied) in the voice of the dead brother. At the wedding party, the minstrel plays the song again for the entire gathering. The queen falls dead, and the wedding guests run away in horror.

The soloists in this piece do not take the parts of particular characters in the story, but share instead the telling of the story. The only arias or set pieces are given to the soloists who share the voice of the slain brother. In this performance, that voice was sung by young girls.

All the soloists in this production were excellent, as was the Dallas Symphony Chorus. Van Zweden’s direction was masterful. The entire text was made clear to the audience through surtitles projected on a screen behind the orchestra.

One must note that Mahler made no attempt to represent the actions of the story in his music. For example, when the minstrel plays the flute, the account of this action was not concurrent with a prominent flute solo in the orchestra. Mahler was not painting pictures, but rather, portraying emotions. The score is full of impassioned sounds, a thrilling tam-tam crescendo among them. The orchestration is heavy in brass, and yet it was used judiciously, and climaxes were prepared with great care by both composer and conductor. I must confess, however, that the six harps looked more impressive on stage than they sounded; perhaps Mahler was right in later eliminating this example of Wagnerian excess.

Copland’s Clarinet Concerto was written for Benny Goodman and not surprisingly, it has some jazz elements. It is also lyrical, especially in the first movement. Gregory Raden, principal clarinet of the Dallas Symphony, played it with complete technical mastery and a sure understanding of Copland’s style.

The Soluna Festival concludes this weekend with an appearance by French-Canadian pianist, Louis Lortie, with the Dallas Symphony. The program will also feature the Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony, and a new work by Conrad Tao, the DSO’s artist-in-residence.

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