{ program notes
of Chicago as Giovanna Seymour in
Anna Bolena and at the Houston Grand
Opera as Fricka in Die Walküre, and
will sing Azucena in Il Trovatore with the
Cincinnati Opera. Ms. Barton’s season
also includes the world premiere of Jake
Heggie’s The Work at Hand with the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Verdi Requiem
with the Toronto Symphony.
Baltimore Choral Arts Society
For Baltimore Choral Arts Society’s bio.,
please see pg. 14.
Peabody Children’s Chorus
The Peabody Children's Chorus, founded
in 1989, is dedicated to providing age-appropriate vocal training for young people.
The Chorus brings children together to
rehearse and perform art and folk music of
multiple cultures, languages, historical periods and styles. In six ensembles rehearsing in Towson or Columbia, Md., young
people gain invaluable experience making
music in ensemble settings, and studying
ear-training and music-reading.
Four hundred children between the ages
of six and 18 participate each year in three
levels of training, rehearsing high-quality
treble music of advancing challenge and
sophistication, and performing in public
concert at least twice a year.
The Peabody Children’s Chorus has
performed with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Baltimore Choral
Arts Society, the Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra, Concert Artists of Baltimore,
Lyric Opera Baltimore, the Mid-Atlantic
Symphony Orchestra, the Morgan State
University Choir, Peabody Conservatory’s Opera Theater and the, and the
Peabody Symphony Orchestra.
The Peabody
Children’s Chorus
30 O v ertur e |
www. bsomusic .org
About the concert:
Symphony No. 3
Gustav Mahler
Born in Kalischt, Bohemia, July 7, 1860; died in
Vienna, May 18, 1911
In June 1895, Gustav Mahler happily
abandoned the pressures and politics of
the Hamburg State Opera, where he was
chief conductor, and headed for the village
of Steinbach on the Attersee, in Austria’s
beautiful Salzkammergut lake district
for a summer of composing. Throughout
his career, Mahler pursued a double life:
for nine months of the year he was one
of Europe’s greatest conductors, driving
his orchestras and himself mercilessly
to achieve his musical ideals; during the
three summer months, he was an equally
driven composer, creating his songs and
symphonies. In the summer of 1895 he
was particularly eager to reach Steinbach
for a new symphony was fermenting
inside — his Third — whose subject
would be nothing less than all of Nature:
from the rocks, flowers, and animals to
mankind and God Himself.
Waiting for him at the edge of the
Attersee lake was a tiny white-washed
cottage, the first of three little studios in
different rural oases he would use over his
composing career. The cottage’s one room
contained only a wood-burning stove,
a few chairs, a writing table, and a baby
grand piano. Windows on three sides gave
views of the lake and a lovely flowering
meadow. Every day Mahler would arrive
at the cottage about 6 or 7 in the morning
and be absorbed in composing till midafternoon or later. There was an unshakable rule that when the door was closed,
no one was to disturb him.
Mahler was an insatiable reader, and
in the 1890s he had been engrossed with
the philosophers Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche. The concept of nature behind
his Third Symphony related more to their
concepts than to a simple appreciation of
nature’s beauties. “That this nature hides
within itself everything that is frightful,
great, and also lovely … of course no
one ever understands this,” he wrote. “It
always strikes me as odd that most people,
when they speak of ‘nature,’ think only of
flowers, little birds, and woodsy smells.
No one knows the god Dionysius, the
great Pan.”
The Third, the longest of his symphonies, grew from this mystical vision of
nature as a complex living being, evolving
upward from the rocks, plants, animal
life, and man to the divine. So powerful
was this vision that he composed movements two through six of this six-movement symphony in under two months
that summer and still had time to write
one of his greatest songs, “Wo die schönen
Trompeten blasen.” It was the most productive summer of his career.
After another year in Hamburg, Mahler
returned in June 1896 to Steinbach to
complete his symphony with a massive
introductory movement in which sleeping
nature is awakened from the prison of
winter and the elemental power of Summer transforms all th