Simon Rattle conducts Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” Simon Rattle conducts Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” Rundfunkchor Berlin, MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig, Boys of the Staats- und Domchor Berlin Antonio Lotti Rundfunkchor Berlin, Simon Halsey Chorus Master Thomas Tallis Spem in alium (40-part motet) (00:09:09) Rundfunkchor Berlin, Simon Halsey Chorus Master Gustav Mahler Symphony No.

8 »Symphony of a Thousand« (01:28:56) Erika Sunnegårdh Baritone, Susan Bullock Soprano, Anna Prohaska Soprano, Lilli Paasikivi Soprano, Nathalie Stutzmann Contralto, Johan Botha Bass, David Wilson-Johnson Baritone, John Relyea Baritone, MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig, Howard Arman Chorus Master, Boys of the Staats- und Domchor Berlin, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Simon Halsey Chorus Master free Artist biographies Even in Gustav Mahler’s time, the Eighth Symphony was called the “Symphony of a Thousand”. The title may seem sensational, but not inappropriate. For no less than eight vocal soloists, two large mixed choirs, a boys’ choir, a large symphony orchestra, a separate brass ensemble and an organ are required for the performance. But its monumental grandness is not only due to its instrumental and vocal forces, but equally because of its global textual basis.

Starting with a medieval Pentecost hymn, and culminating in the closing scene of Goethe’s Faust, the symphony draws together fundamental philosophical ideas of Western history. The premiere in 1910, performed before the cultural elite of the time – the audience included Siegfried Wagner, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Bruno Walter, Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann – was the most triumphant success in the life of Gustav Mahler. And the composer himself felt the symphony to be “the grandest thing I have done yet”, as he wrote to the conductor Willem Mengelberg. It was also Mengelberg who conducted the first performance with the Berliner Philharmoniker in May 1912. After another in 1928, it took almost half a century before the orchestra, under the direction of Seiji Ozawa, turned to the work again in 1975. Following another three performances, this is therefore only the fifth with the Berliner Philharmoniker since the Second World War – and the first with Sir Simon Rattle as conductor.

As an introduction to the symphony, the Rundfunkchor Berlin sings two original Latin motest, including the legendary, 40-voice Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis. Resounding Universe Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” “Forewords” to the Eighth When Simon Rattle prefaced his interpretation of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with Henry Purcell’s Funeral Music, he was seeking programmatic unity through the idea of the funeral march. Introducing this performance of the Eighth Symphony are liturgical settings from the Renaissance and Baroque, polychoral works of the old masters that prefigure the conception of a “resounding universe” by which Mahler described his newly completed Eighth. The ultimate example of this style is the Tudor court organist Thomas Tallis’s 40-part motet Spem in alium. An essential feature of this composition’s structure is the alternation between imitative passages involving only a few voices and huge tutti entries with powerful chords. The idea of a polyphonic overlay of vocal lines also inspired Antonio Lotti 150 years later.

Born in Hanover, he lived most of his life in Venice, where he served as organist and later maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s. Among his compositions for the basilica are a number of highly expressive settings of the Crucifixus for 5-10 voices, the manuscripts of which are still widely scattered in libraries in Europe and the US. In place of the almost cosmically revolving consonances in the Tallis motet, Lotti’s eight-part Crucifixus features the expressive dissonances of the Italian Baroque known as durezze. “My most important work” – Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony “It would be absurd if my most important work happened to be the easiest to understand,” wrote Mahler to his wife Alma in September 1909 after playing portions of his Eighth Symphony to his Dutch friends Willem Mengelberg and Alphons Diepenbrock. “It’s funny: the work always makes the same, typically powerful impression.” These were harbingers of the overpowering effect the Eighth would make at its world premiere in Munich’s Neue Festhalle on 12 September 1910.

All the more rapid was the decline of its reputation in later decades when Theodor W. Adorno’s polemical phrase “giant symbolic shell” made the rounds. It was not the only objection raised against this exceptional work. One saw in its affirmative tone a retreat from the scepticism of the three preceding instrumental symphonies. Mahler biographer Jens Malte Fischer has declared: “The Eighth was reproached for having committed itself too wholeheartedly to the late 19th-century’s appetite for the value-producing, value-celebrating Gesamtkunstwerk in an age of the value vacuum.” The composer would have been baffled by such reservations, convinced as he was that the Eighth was a gift from above. In a letter to Alma he recalled beginning work on the symphony in June 1906: “Four years ago, on the first day of the holidays, I went up to my hut at Maiernigg with the firm resolution of idling the holiday away ... and recruiting my strength.

On the threshold of my old workshop the spiritus creator took hold of me and shook me and drove me on for the next eight weeks until my greatest work was done.” Mahler himself helped weave the legend of that euphoric summer of 1906. He reportedly found the Pentecost hymn Veni Creator Spiritus by the 9th-century Mainz archbishop Hrabanus Maurus in a “damned old hymnbook”. When the “creative spirit took hold” of him, there was no room for textual questions. Only later did he discover that two and a half strophes of the original were missing from his popular version of the hymn, but, miraculously, they fit seamlessly into the sketches he had drafted without knowledge of this additional text. So it was that one thing after another contributed to the notion that this work in its entirety was meant to be. Veni Creator Spiritus Mahler set the Whitsun hymn as a powerful symphony cantata for double chorus, boys choir and orchestra, tonally centred in the typical hymn key of E flat major and organized in a taut sonata form, whose themes recur and are transformed in the symphony’s second part.

In the middle of the first part’s development, a powerful new theme is introduced that symbolizes the text “Accende lumen sensibus”: “Illuminate our senses”. It is this theme that begins Part II, now in E flat minor and moved down to the basses in muffled pizzicato to depict Goethe’s “mountain gorge”. In the course of the second part, the theme recovers its euphoric power as a symbol of creativity itself, which Mahler in this symphony connects with the theme of Eros, redeeming love. At the end of the work, the Eternal Feminine that “leads us on high” and the descending Creative Spirit come together in a mystical union where the two forces are conformed and fused. Scene from Faust “We experience the truth of life without knowing how.” In this succinct phrase Goethe encapsulates what he is trying to say with the conclusion of Faust II. Mahler, too, was inspired by this idea when he set Goethe’s verses: Everything is revealed here through music – the ascent to the heights and disclosure of life’s ultimate truths – as the composer’s reply to the creativity kindled by the spirit in the first part.

“Everything subjectively tragic is abolished in the Eighth,” he told Mengelberg. “Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound. These are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving.” The Eighth is also monumental in the sense that Mahler needed every musical element – from the six flutes to the elaborate choral sub-division – in order to particularize the various stages of Goethe’s ascent to the heights and, at the end, to reintegrate them in a grand conclusion. The scene begins with a long orchestral prelude, evoking the mountain gorge whose caves are home to the Anchorites, hermits of the early Church. From deep pizzicato basses in dark E flat minor, the view opens upward to where a keening woodwind theme floats in the strings’ tremolo clouds. This is the dotted-rhythm motif that informs all the love themes of this vast scene. Thus the orchestral prelude, both in its motifs and its strict counterpoint, prepares the “great liturgy”, as the final scene has been described.

For the Anchorites’ entry Mahler again takes up the double-chorus principle he uses in Part I, here as a division into tenors and basses singing, extremely softly and in alternation, “Waldung, sie schwankt heran” (“Wavering woods”) on clipped breathlike syllables – a visionary modern choral technique. The next big choral section leads us to “higher spheres”. It is the Chorus of Angels “carrying the immortal part of Faust”. Their verse “Gerettet ist das edle Glied der Geisterwelt vom Bösen” (“Now that precious part of our spirit world is saved from evil”) is sung at first by both women’s choirs together. Above them is the Chorus of Blessed Boys “circling round the highest peak”. Later the women’s voices are sub-divided: Mahler gives the Chorus of Younger Angels to the “lighter voices” of the first choir, that of the “More Perfect Angels” to the second women’s choir, further divided into sections. Doctor Marianus’s rapturous solo with chorus follows.

Then the Boys intone “Er überwächst uns schon” (“He is already surpassing us”), the choral sound growing ever more ecstatic and splendid until it culminates in “Jungfrau, Mutter, Königin, Göttin, bleibe gnädig!” (“Virgin, Mother, Queen, Goddess, keep us in thy favour”). Following a numinous orchestral interlude the nearly hour-long movement reaches its final consummation in the “Chorus mysticus”: “All that passes away is only a likeness”. The chorus’s ppp E flat major entry inevitably recalls “Auferstehen” (“Rise again”) at the end of the “Resurrection” Symphony. In a similarly broad, sweeping intensification – with the euphoric words “Blicket auf”, exhorting the penitents to “gaze aloft” at “her” saving glance, the work moves to its climax: “Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan” (“The Eternal-Feminine leads us on high”). In the orchestral conclusion, the mighty “Veni creator” motif chimes in tellingly, welding the entire symphony into a gigantic unity.

Karl Böhmer Translation: Richard Evidon Johan Botha, was born in South Africa, studied in Pretoria and made his debut as Max in Weber’s Freischütz at the Staatstheater Roodeport. In 1993 he made his international breakthrough with his debut as Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly) at the Opéra Bastille. Since then he has performed at the state opera houses in Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg and Munich, at the Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona, ​​London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden, La Scala Milan, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Los Angeles and San Francisco Opera, Sydney Opera House and at the Salzburg Festival. He has had close ties with the Vienna State Opera since 1996, and he regularly performs at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His stage repertoire includes such roles as Florestan (Fidelio), Radamès (Aida), Cavaradossi (Tosca), Erik (Der fliegende Holländer), Lohengrin, Stolzing (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Parsifal and the role of the Emperor (Die Frau ohne Schatten).

In 2010, the tenor made his debut as Siegmund (Die Walküre) at the Bayreuth Festival. The artist, who was awarded the title “Österreichischer Kammersänger” in 2003, also performs with leading symphony orchestras all over the world with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Semyon Bychkov and Antonio Pappano. Johan Botha first appeared with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1994 under the direction of Claudio Abbado. Susan Bullock began her career at Opera North and English National Opera in London, where she acquired a broad spectrum of lyric to dramatic roles, making a sensation in particular as Isolde. She is now considered one of the world’s leading interpreters of Wagner and Strauss, and was honoured with the Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2009 for her portrayal of Strauss’ Salome at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

Her multifaceted operatic and concert repertoire also includes roles in works by Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Janáček, Schoenberg, Berg, Schreker, Bloch, Britten, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Tippett, Henze and Górecki. Susan Bullock has appeared in the music capitals of Europe, North and South America, Asia, and at major festivals such as Glyndebourne and Spoleto. In German-speaking countries, she is regularly to be heard in the great opera houses in Dresden, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Vienna. Susan Bullock has worked together with conductors including Semyon Bychkov, Daniel Harding, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Edo de Waart; the pianist Malcolm Martineau frequently accompanies her at her recitals. She made her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in late November 2006 under the direction of Mark Elder as Gertrud in concert performances of Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel.

The Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill studied in Glasgow, Toronto and London and was joint winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award in 2002. Her repertoire focuses on works from the 19th and 20th century. She is in particular demand as a concert singer, in which capacity she has appeared with the London Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra and, more especially, the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Among the conductors with whom she has worked to date are Marc Albrecht, Sir Colin Davis, Bernard Haitink, James Levine, Kurt Masur and Donald Runnicles. At the 2006 Aldeburgh Festival she sang a selection of Mahler’s Wunderhorn Lieder with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Oliver Knussen. Her operatic roles include Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia for Scottish Opera and Suzuki in Madama Butterfly for English National Opera. Karen Cargill gave her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in May 2008 as Waltraute in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle.

The MDR Rundfunkchor (Central German Radio Chorus) is ARD’s largest professional concert choir looking back on a long and rich tradition. It became affiliated to Central German Radio in Leipzig in 1946. Its musical profile was shaped in no small way by its first post-war music director, Herbert Kegel, under whose guidance the choir was soon being ranked among the finest in Europe, a position that it has maintained to the present day thanks to the work of its later chorus masters, Dietrich Knothe and Horst Neumann, its chorus director Gert Frischmuth and its principal conductors, Wolf-Dieter Hauschild and Jörg-Peter Weigle. In 1998 a new music director was appointed in the person of Howard Arman. The choir’s repertory includes a cappella pieces and symphonic works from almost one thousand years of musical history. The choir has also given the world premieres and local premieres of countless works, adding to its reputation as a specialist in contemporary music.

Among the conductors who have worked with the ensemble are Herbert von Karajan, Kurt Masur, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Claudio Abbado, Sir Simon Rattle, Seiji Ozawa and Bernard Haitink. Its wide-ranging activities are documented by almost two hundred recordings on LP and CD. Tours have taken the Central German Radio Chorus to leading music centres and festivals throughout Europe and also as far afield as Israel and Japan. The choir appears on a regular basis with the MDR Sinfonieorchester (Central German Radio Symphony Orchestra) and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Since 2004/05 the choir has invited audiences to St Peter’s Church in Leipzig for a voyage of discovery of the vocal repertory. These concerts are held three times a year under the title Nachtgesang. The MDR Rundfunkchor first performed with the Berliner Philharmoniker in two concerts in mid-September 1990; most recently, they appeared with the orchestra in performances of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Requiem für einen jungen Dichter in April 2009, conducted by Peter Eötvös.

Anna Prohaska began her vocal studies with Eberhard Kloke when she was 14 years old. She later studied at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler in Berlin with Norma Sharp and Brenda Mitchell as well as attending Wolfram Rieger’s Lieder interpretation classes. She also attended the Académie Européenne de Musique in Aix-en-Provence in 2003 and the International Handel Academy in Karlsruhe in 2006. Anna Prohaska’s stage repertoire includes roles in works by Handel, Gluck, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Debussy, Strauss and Britten: she was to be heard in the roles of Fora in The Turn of the Screw and Harry in Albert Herring at the Komische Oper in Berlin. She has also performed the roles of Tebaldo (Don Carlo), Papagena (Die Zauberflöte), Barbarina (Le nozze di Figaro) und Mercédès (Carmen) at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, where she has been a member of the ensemble since the 2006/07 season.

Furthermore, she has appeared in theatres in Aachen and Paris as well as at the Lucerne and Salzburg festivals. Since making her debut in concerts of the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation in June 2007, she has appeared regularly with the orchestra and its chamber music ensembles, most recently in the middle of May this year, when she sang works of Mozart and Berg under the direction of Claudio Abbado. John Relyea studied singing with, among others, his father, the Canadian bass-baritone Gary Relyea, and later with Jerome Hines. In 1996 he made his debut at the opera in San Francisco as Colline in La Bohème. John Relyea subsequently sang at the festival in Santa Fe and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1999 he made his European debut at the Edinburgh Festival in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia; this was followed by performances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London and at the Paris Opéra. Since then, John Relyea has also performed in other leading theatres such as the state opera houses in Munich and Vienna, the Mariinsky Theatre St. Petersburg , Seattle Opera and San Francisco Opera.

The artist’s repertoire includes such diverse roles as Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), Escamillo (Carmen), King Marke (Tristan und Isolde), Nick Shadow (The Rake’s Progress) and the title role in George Enescu’s Oedipe. On the concert platform, John Relyea works with major international orchestras as well as leading conductors, and he is to be heard – not least also in lieder recitals – at festivals such as those in Salzburg, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Tanglewood and at the BBC Proms. He has appeared several times with the Berliner Philharmoniker since the opening concert of the 2004/2005 season, most recently on three evenings at the end of 2005 with works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Rundfunkchor Berlin, founded in 1925, produced great musical moments of the 1920s and 30s under the direction of conductors such as George Szell, Hermann Scherchen, Otto Klemperer and Erich Kleiber.

After the Second World War, the choir and its principal conductor Helmut Koch made the oratorios of Handel internationally known in their original versions. Dietrich Knothe (1982 – 1993) formed the choir into a precision instrument for the most difficult of works; Robin Gritton (1994 – 2001) both enriched and refined the ensemble’s palette of colours. Since 2001, the Rundfunkchor Berlin has been led by Simon Halsey, who places particular emphasis on stylistic and linguistic perfection, resulting in lively and exciting performances of works from all periods and in all styles. Their work together is documented by a busy recording schedule; recently their CD of Kaija Saariaho’s opera L’amour de loin with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester conducted by Kent Nagano won the 2010 Grammy Award for best opera recording.

Simon Halsey, who was awarded the “Bundesverdienstkreuz” (Cross of the Order of Merit) in January 2011, has also initiated many of the choir’s education and outreach projects, the interdisciplinary event series Broadening the Scope of Choral Music as well as the annual Sing-along Concert. The choir has been a partner of leading orchestras and conductors all over the world, including long-standing partnerships with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and the Berliner Philharmoniker. The Rundfunkchor Berlin last appeared with the Berliner Philharmoniker in June 2011 under the direction of Vladimir Jurowski in works by Igor Stravinky and Gustav Mahler. The Staats- und Domchor Berlin is one of the most famous boys’ choirs in Germany, with a history that goes back to the 16th century.

As the then-called “Königlicher Domchor”, their first golden age was in the 19th century under the direction of conductors such as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Otto Nicolai and Heinrich August Neidhardt. In 1923 the ensemble was renamed the “Staats- und Domchor Berlin” and became affiliated with the Hochschule für Musik. Today, the choir provides music for services at the Cathedral of Berlin and also for state occasions. In addition, it participates in performances in opera houses and concert venues in Berlin, and holds its own concerts with a repertoire which includes the great works of the Western choral tradition from the Middle Ages to modern times. Since 2002, the choir has been led by Kai-Uwe Jirka, Professor of choral conducting at the Berlin University of the Arts. In addition to many other awards, the Staats- und Domchor Berlin won the European Youth Choir Culture Prize in 2002. Tours have taken the choir to other European countries, Asia, the USA and Israel.

The Staats- und Domchor’s most recent appearance with the Berliner Philharmoniker was in February 2011 in performances of Mahler’s Third Symphony, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Paris-born Nathalie Stutzmann began her vocal training with her mother, and later studied singing with Hans Hotter at the École d’Art Lyrique de l’Opéra de Paris. The alto, who also studied piano, bassoon and conducting, has developed a broad repertoire from Baroque to 20th century works. Initially making a name for herself particularly as an interpreter of Lieder, Nathalie Stutzmann has also gone on to work on the concert stage with conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Seiji Ozawa, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Simon Rattle and Christoph von Dohnányi, performing with, for example, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Boston and the Cleveland Symphony Orchestras, the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

The artist, who has been awarded the title “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres”, also teaches regularly in masterclasses. In addition, she leads the ensemble Orfeo 55, which she herself formed in 2009. Following her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in September 2007 in a series of concerts of Claude Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, she most recently performed here last February again under the direction of Simon Rattle in Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony. Erika Sunnegårdh comes from a Swedish-American family. She was trained at, among others, the Manhattan School of Music, the Tanglewood Music Center and at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in Aldeburgh. She completed her master’s degree at the Aaron Copland School of Music of Queens College. The singer first made her name notably with contemporary chamber music and lieder repertoire; in the world of opera, she made her international breakthrough as Turandot at Malmö Opera in 2004.

Erika Sunnegårdh has been particularly successful in roles of stage works by Beethoven (Leonore), Puccini (Tosca, Turandot) and Strauss (Chrysotemis, Salome), but also Wagner and Verdi roles (Senta, Helmwige, Gerhilde, Lady Macbeth), performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Welsh National Opera, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, ​​the state opera houses in Vienna and Munich, the Oper Frankfurt and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Again in Malmö in 2008, she appeared as Paulina in the premiere of Jonas Forssell’s Death and the Maiden. Erika Sunnegårdh has also performed at the festivals in Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg. As a soloist with leading orchestras throughout the world, she has worked with conductors such as Semyon Bychkov, Myung-Wun Chung, Gustavo Dudamel, Kirill Petrenko, Sir Simon Rattle and Mario Venzago; these concerts will be the soprano’s first with the Berliner Philharmoniker. The British baritone David Wilson-Johnson studied Modern Languages at St.

Catharine’s College, Cambridge and singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Over a career already spanning forty years he has been a guest of the major opera houses, orchestras and festivals worldwide. His opera and concert repertoire ranges from early music (eg. Rameau’s Les Boréades) to works of the Classical and Romantic periods and compositions by Messiaen, Henze and Maxwell Davies. He has sung under many distinguished conductors including Pierre Boulez, Frans Brüggen, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sir Charles Mackerras, Zubin Mehta and Sir Simon Rattle. David Wilson-Johnson taught for over 20 years at the Summer School Ferrandou in the Dordogne. He now teaches at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatorium. After his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in November 2006 he last appeared with the orchestra in December that same year in the education project featuring Stravinsky’s Les Noces under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle. In co-operation with the musikfest berlin 11 Sir Simon Rattle appears by courtesy of EMI Classics. Symphony No.

8, “Symphony of a Thousand” | LA Phil Symphony No. 8, “Symphony of a Thousand” Last Modified: May 14, 2012 In 1906, while attending the Mozart Festival in Salzburg, Mahler ran into the music historian Richard Specht. At the time Mahler was preoccupied with the composition of his Eighth Symphony, and he spoke at length about it to Specht. Several years after Mahler’s death Specht published an account of Mahler's comments about the Symphony: “Think, in the last three weeks I have completed the sketches of an entirely new symphony, something in comparison with which all the rest of my works are no more than introductions. I have never written anything like it; it is something quite different in both content and style from all my other works, and certainly the biggest thing that I have ever done. Nor do I think that I have ever worked under such a feeling of compulsion; it was like a lightning vision – I saw the whole piece immediately before my eyes and only needed to write it down, as though it were being dictated to me.

This Eighth Symphony is remarkable for the fact that it unites two poems in two different languages, the first being a Latin hymn and the second nothing less than the final scene of the second part of Faust. Does that astonish you? I have for years longed to set this scene with the anchorites and the final scene with the Mater gloriosa, and to set it quite differently from other composers who have made it saccharine and feeble; but then [I] gave up the idea. Lately, however, an old book fell into my hands and I chanced on the hymn “Veni creator spiritus” – and at a single stroke I saw the whole thing – not only the opening theme, but the whole first movement, and as an answer to it I could imagine nothing more beautiful than Goethe’s text in the scene with the anchorites! Formally, too, it is something quite novel – can you imagine a symphony that is, from beginning to end, sung?

Hitherto I have always used words and voices simply in an explanatory way, as a short cut to creating a certain atmosphere and to express something which, purely symphonically, could only be expressed at great length, with the terseness and precision only possible by using words. Here, on the other hand, voices are also used as instruments: the first movement is strictly symphonic in form but all of it is sung. Strange, in fact, that this has never occurred to any other composer – it really is Columbus’ egg, a ‘pure’ symphony in which the most beautiful instrument in the world is given its true place – and not simply as one sonority among others, for in my symphony the human voice is after all the bearer of the whole poetic idea.” Those familiar with Mahler’s personality know that he habitually made such excitable and passionate remarks about his music, particularly when he was in the middle of composing it. But in the case of the Eighth Symphony, Mahler’s assessment was – and remains – accurate. In its highly unorthodox juxtaposition of texts and astoundingly large performing resources, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 stands incontestably as the grandest and most peculiar work he ever wrote.

But the Symphony also represented an abrupt shift in Mahler’s style. His first four symphonies routinely combine a jumble of disparate elements – rustic scherzos and folk dances, a parody of village musicians at a funeral, highly dissonant and complex storm music set against lushly Romantic love themes. In addition, he regularly fit songs that he had written earlier into the middle of symphonic movements. These usually were meant to underline the philosophical agendas of the music. In the three symphonies prior to the Eighth, however, Mahler begins to write more abstractly. His forms become somewhat more regular, the textures become leaner, more contrapuntal, and intense motivic development replaces the more extroverted Romantic gestures of his early music. Moreover, he stopped using voice and chorus to underline philosophical meanings. The prominent use of vocal mediums in the Eighth Symphony, then, its unusual degree of harmonic consonance and lusher instrumental textures, all represent a dramatic (although temporary) return to his earliest style. The first movement sets the medieval Latin hymn “Veni creator spiritus” in a sonata-allegro form. The first sound we hear in the work is a full-throated E-flat-major chord in the organ.

Richly consonant, closely spaced in the center of musical space, and supported by sustaining low string and woodwind instruments, the chord greets the listener with a warm, open-armed embrace. Immediately thereafter, the two main choruses address the creative spirit in a loud but genial manner: “Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, come!” Following this opening section, which in places features dense contrapuntal dialogues between the two choruses, the music suddenly grows quiet, most of the instruments drop out, and the tempo slows. At this point Mahler introduces the lyrical second theme of this sonata exposition, expressing the words imple superna gratia (fill with grace from on high). The soloists take the theme first, presenting an intricate polyphonic web in which the focus of attention shifts fluidly from voice to voice. (The emphasis on counterpoint here and throughout the Symphony, by the way, reveals that Mahler had been studying the music of J. S. Bach carefully during these years.) The melody itself is one of the most beautiful Mahler ever wrote, tracing an ascending arch through gentle, asymmetrical fragments.

It communicates in more intimate terms the same kind of expansive, all-embracing spirit that we encountered in the initial choral throng. The chorus follows the soloists with a hushed, chorale-like version of their theme. In subsequent passages, Mahler develops the melody by distributing it flexibly between the soloists, choruses, and orchestral instruments. Mahler prepares for the development section with a striking passage, in which material for soloists and both choirs braid together with a line for solo violin. The passage swells gradually to a thunderous climax, but the expected chord of resolution is replaced with – a silent pause! The development itself begins with a fragmentary passage for orchestra alone, using the kind of scampering dotted rhythms found in the first movement of his Symphony No. 2. Long-held pedals in the bass region lend a sense of impending conflict. After this, the solo singers develop material with the solo violin. In the midst of the development the music begins yet another gradual swell, finally reaching a moment when the chorus enters thunderously on the word ascende. This particular climax seems to give the much-delayed resolution to the progression that had been interrupted by silence just before the development.

The children’s choir enters soon after, making its first appearance in the Symphony and reinforcing similarities between this work and Bach. Mahler commentators have viewed Part Two of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony as a loose sequence of three movements. However, this vast setting of the closing scene of Goethe’s Faust is best regarded as a cantata consisting of a string of discrete sections with different styles and forms: recitative, arioso, strophic hymn, chorale, solo song, to name a few. For that matter, its structure better resembles the music dramas of Wagner – particularly Parsifal – than any symphonic model. Part Two begins with an extended instrumental introduction. To capture the spirit of this thoroughly Romantic landscape – Goethe describes the scene as “Ravines, forests, rocks, wilderness” – Mahler starts slowly, solemnly, with short woodwind figures. Strings are mainly absent, except for the tense single-note tremolo high in the violins. This absence intensifies two passages in which the violins appear suddenly, whether with harsh chromatic chords or with an agitated, angular melody.

The “Chorus and Echo,” given by the choral basses and tenors, enter quietly and tentatively, with short motives taken from the introduction. Soon the Pater Ecstaticus enters with a song in praise of love. As set by Mahler, the song is warm and ardent, saturated with a 19th-century style lyricism. But the song actually proceeds in regularly measured phrases, following a fairly conventional statement-departure-return structure. Near the end, at the words “eternal love,” Mahler builds a beautifully florid, soaring decoration into the melody. From a “rocky chasm,” Pater Profundus enters with a second song. The focus remains on the topic of love, but here more tumultuous elements receive stress. The harmonic language becomes much more chromatic, and the strings present craggy outbursts like those from the introduction. The following choral passage involves the “Chorus of Blessed Boys,” who circle the highest peaks, and Angels, who soar “in the higher atmosphere, carrying Faust’s immortal soul.” These two entities sing simultaneously, featuring a bright but resolute fugue.

The remainder of the Symphony, as mentioned above, includes a connected sequence of passages for choruses of various combinations, solo ensembles, and solo arias. The music becomes increasingly ecstatic, culminating in the final climactic chorale. During the course of Part Two, many themes and motives from the entire Symphony return, transformed into a bewildering array of new shapes. This process helps create the sense of progression toward the eternal that both Mahler (and Goethe) tried to create in this work. Mahler wrote the gigantic score in about ten weeks, composing, according to his wife Alma, “as if in a fever.” It is clear that Mahler dwelled carefully on the meaning of his texts as he composed. In the “Veni,” for example, he made many slight alterations to the hymn in order to stress one meaning as opposed to another. At the very beginning of the work, for example, the opening line of text – “Veni creator spiritus” (Come, Holy Ghost, Creator) – stresses the opening word by repeating it, thus emphasizing the invocational character of the line. A few moments later a new melody, based on the opening one, expresses the same text.

But in this case Mahler re-shuffles the opening line of text to “Spiritus, O creator, veni creator.” The new word order – and the “O” just before “creator” – shifts the attention from the supplicatory “come” to the creative spirit. This free treatment of texts, by the way, was characteristic of the composer throughout his career. It is just as clear that Mahler carefully planned the connections between the two texts. The joining of a 9th-century Latin hymn and Goethe’s Faust (completed in 1830-1831) may strike some as a monumental non sequitur, since they obviously come from separate worlds. For years scholars have wondered whether Mahler felt some sort of thematic connection between the two texts, or whether he wished simply to force them into a unity of his own devising by linking them musically. But the composer himself once told his wife that he meant the Symphony to emphasize the link between an early expression of Christian belief in the power of the holy spirit and Goethe’s symbolic vision of mankind’s redemption through love.

Mahler makes many philosophical connections throughout the work, consistently stressing the principles of divine grace, earthly inadequacy, and spiritual reincarnation. Mahler conducted the premiere of the Eighth Symphony in September 1910, four years after completing the work and just eight months before he died. The performance, Mahler’s last as a conductor in Europe, was to be the greatest triumph he ever experienced as a composer. But the preparation leading up to this event did not go smoothly. Beginning early in 1910, many months before the performance, Mahler exchanged several letters with Emil Gutmann, the impresario who had persuaded Mahler to conduct the premiere for a Mahler festival in Munich. Growing increasingly concerned, Mahler began to insist, sometimes frantically, that the performance be called off. He was particularly certain that the choirs could not learn their parts in time. In a letter to his trusted friend Bruno Walter, Mahler warned that he “shall ruthlessly [Mahler’s emphasis] cancel the whole thing if all artistic conditions are not met to my satisfaction.” A few weeks later, however, Mahler seemed to have resigned himself to a fiasco.

He wrote Walter, “Until today I have been fighting inwardly and outwardly against this catastrophic Barnum-and-Bailey performance of my Eighth in Munich. When [Gutmann] took me unawares in Vienna that time, I didn’t stop to think of all the to-do that goes with such ‘festivals’.” Mahler continues that, even though he is convinced the performance will be “utterly inadequate,” he sees no way to escape from his obligations. It didn’t help matters when Mahler learned, much to his dissatisfaction, that Gutmann had nicknamed his work “The Symphony of a Thousand.” The tag, of course, is a rather shallow one to apply to a symphony by Mahler. It was not only correct, however, it was an understatement. As the program supervised by Mahler for the 1910 premiere of the Symphony states, the work required 858 singers and 171 instrumentalists. To counter the effect of so many singers, Mahler had to augment the standard orchestra. Thus, he increases it to 84 strings, 6 harps, 22 woodwinds, and 17 brass players.

The score also requested that 4 trumpets and 4 trombones be placed apart. To assemble such a body of singers, it was necessary to supplement the Munich chorus (which included 350 children) with large groups from Vienna and Leipzig. The eight soloists came from Munich, Vienna, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, and Wiesbaden. The first performance, then, seemed to match in spirit Mahler’s attitude to the work, which he once called “a gift to the nation.” — Steven Johnson Symphony No. 8 in E-flat Major, "Symphony of a Thousand" Symphony No. 8 in E-flat Major, "Symphony of a Thousand" About the Work National Symphony Orchestra: Leonard Slatkin, conductor/Mahler © Richard Freed This grand-scaled work, known as the "Symphony of a Thousand" because of the huge number of performers it requires, was composed in the incredibly brief space of six weeks in the summer of 1906, and was orchestrated the following year. Mahler took his text for the first of the work's two movements from the ninth-century Latin hymn "Veni Creator Spiritus," attributed to Hrabanus Maurus (ca.

776-856), Archbishop of Mainz, and that for the second movement from Part II of Goethe's Faust. The composer himself conducted the work's premiere in Munich on September 12, 1910. The National Symphony Orchestra first performed this work on July 22, 1976, at Wolf Trap, with Julius Rudel conducting, and presented it last on June 2, 3, 4 and 7, 1988, Mstislav Rostropovich conducting. The vocal complement indicated in the score comprises eight soloists (3 sopranos, 2 altos, tenor, baritone, bass), a children's chorus, and mixed double chorus.

The instrumental forces comprise a piccolo, 4 flutes, 4 oboes, English horn, 5 clarinets, bass clarinet, 4 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 horns, 10 trumpets, 7 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, gong, triangle, bells, glockenspiel, celesta, 2 mandolins, piano, harmonium, 2 harps, strings and organ. The number of brass instruments is frequently somewhat reduced, as it is in the present performances.) Duration, 1 hour 20 minutes. In November 1907 Mahler was conducting in Helsinki, where he had a frequently cited conversation with his Finnish colleague Jean Sibelius on the nature of the symphony, as defined in terms of its form. Sibelius, who composed a number of overtly descriptive works, rejected such content for the symphony, in which he insisted on "the severity of style and the profound logic that creates an inner connection between all of the motifs," while Mahler countered, "No, the symphony must be like the world.

It must embrace everything." Mahler had by then completed the orchestration of his Eighth Symphony, the work in which he set out to realize that conviction more grandly than in any other. Indeed, some fifteen months earlier, on August 18, 1906, by which time he had completed the composition of this work but had not yet begun to orchestrate it, he had written to the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg, his most enthusiastic and energetic supporter among the recognized master conductors at that time, I have just now completed my Eighth . . . [which] will be something the world has never heard the likes of before. All Nature is endowed with a voice in it. . . . It is the biggest thing I have done so far. . . . Imagine the universe beginning to ring and resound. It is no longer human voices. It is planets and suns revolving in their orbits. . . . All my other symphonies have been but preludes to this one.

To be sure, the Eighth is the most unusual of all Mahler's highly individualistic symphonies, not only because it calls for such vast choral forces from start to finish, but because it is the most extrovert segment of a symphonic cycle whose overall "autobiographical" or "confessional" character otherwise varies only in terms of degree. This work represents an exultant concept; it was undertaken at a happy time in his personal life, and it brought him the greatest public success he was to experience as a composer. It was also the last of his works introduced in his own lifetime: he himself conducted the premiere in Munich, and, with all those performers assembled for that event, and the curiosity about the work thus generated, he was given the unusual satisfaction of presiding over a second performance the day after the actual premiere.) Between the composition of this work and its premiere, Mahler's life changed dramatically, both personally and professionally.

In 1907, the year in which he completed the orchestration of the Eighth Symphony and rounded out his tenth season as director of the Vienna Opera, he suffered the "triple blow of fate" foretold in his Sixth Symphony: the elder of his two young daughters, Maria Anna, died of diphtheria in July; his wife collapsed from "extreme exhaustion of the heart," and when her physician persuaded Mahler himself to submit to an examination his own fatal heart disease was made known; in the fall his stormy reign at the Opera came to an end. The last of these three blows was of course the most easily dealt with. In the time that remained to him Mahler held positions in New York, where he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera and then served from 1909 until his death two years later as music director of the New York Philharmonic. As a composer, he spent his last four years under what he himself described as a "death sentence," devoting his creative energy to his tripartite farewell to life: the "song-symphony" Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth Symphony, and the uncompleted Tenth.

In 1906, however, there was nothing in Mahler's personal life to cast a shadow over his happiness. He had been married for four years to the fascinating Alma Maria Schindler, 19 years his junior; they had two lovely little daughters; he was one of the most respected musicians in Europe, holding perhaps the most envied (if not the most consistently pleasant) of all musical directorships; and the summers which he devoted to his creative work in the serene bucolic setting of his summer place at Maiernigg were aptly described by Alma as their "splendid isolation." (They fled following Maria Anna's death, and relocated at Toblach for their remaining summers.) But Mahler was by no means completed isolated with his family while he composed his Eighth. He commuted from Maiernigg to Salzburg for rehearsals and performances of The Marriage of Figaro during those weeks, and the composition of so huge a work in so short a time--a time in which he was meeting other obligations--must be regarded as no less remarkable than the creation of Mozart's three final symphonies during a similar summer period 118 years earlier.

Alma noted in her memoirs, Mahler made a superhuman effort that summer. He would often play me passages from the new work, and he felt incredibly happy and elated. Happiness and elation, indeed, are the keynotes of this singular work, into which Mahler poured all his love for life, for humanity, and for the miracle of creativity itself. The speed with which he produced the score is reflected in the extraordinary spontaneity that illumines it from beginning to end. "The universe begins to vibrate and resound . . . " The score calls for the most massive choral and orchestral forces Mahler ever assembled. At some points in the work some of these forces are heard from the rear of the hall and its upper reaches rather than from the stage. Mahler undertook to justify these unprecedented numbers, and their placement, with this statement: We moderns need a great apparatus to express our ideas, whether they be big or small.

Firstly because, in order to protect ourselves against false interpretation, we are forced to spread the numerous colors of our rainbow over different palettes; secondly because our eye learns to see in the rainbow more and more colors, and increasingly fine and delicate modulations; thirdly because in the huge spaces of our concert halls and opera houses we have to make a big noise to be understood by many. The "big noise" Mahler made in his Eighth Symphony was most assuredly "understood by many." The enthusiastic response of the audience at the Munich premiere and the repeat performance the following day made the occasion one of the relatively few genuine triumphs of his life as a composer--perhaps the grandest of all. (By the time the premiere took place he had completed both Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth Symphony as well as the full sketch and partial orchestration of the Tenth, but he died eight months later, without hearing any of those valedictory works.) The sobriquet "Symphony of a Thousand," affixed to the Eighth because that number of performers actually did take part in the premiere, was vigorously rejected by Mahler as giving the impression of a work whose chief characteristic is its hugeness.

The Symphony actually requires les than 25% of that number in the way of performing personnel, and there are few sections in which anything like the full complement is used at the same time, so that such moments as do call for all participants stand out in even higher relief. If the Eighth had to have a "non-generic" or descriptive title, perhaps Liebeshymnus ("Hymn to Love") might have been in order. Mahler's original plan called for the opening "Veni Creator Spiritus" to be followed not by one vast movement, but by three shorter ones: a purely orchestral scherzo and adagio, and a finale that was to be a choral setting of a hymn on the birth of Eros. The opening hymn had provided Mahler with the original inspiration for the work, but the finale was something he had to search for, and instead of finding another such text he was struck by another inspiration when he turned to Goethe's Faust.

Instead of celebrating the birth of the god of love to end his symphony, Mahler chose Goethe's fantastic final scene (which had already been set by Schumann, among others, and had supplied the brief epilogue to Liszt's Faust Symphony), surely one of the most extraordinary celebrations of love and its power in all literature. While it may seem that the Latin hymn and Goethe's German text are worlds apart, Mahler's inspiration revealed the superb unity of these elements, which he proceeded to confirm gloriously in his musical treatment of them. He had concluded his Third Symphony with an expansive instrumental movement which he titled "What Love Tells Me"--with the explanation that he regarded the terms "Love" and "God" as being interchangeable in this context. The juxtaposition of the two texts he chose for the Eighth may be regarded as an expansion on that thought, an exultant and ecstatic paean to love as a divine gift, expressed in the first movement in terms of the elemental and generative, and in the second exalting, purifying, redemptive, transfiguring.

It might be said that Mahler did not entirely abandon his original four-movement concept, for the Faust setting may be analyzed as falling into three sections more or less corresponding to a slow movement, scherzo and finale. The entire sequence is so seamless, however, and its emotional sweep so compelling, that such considerations are of only minor relevance to the listener's appreciation of what Mahler put together. For all the huge forces he has placed at his disposal, the presentation is not in terms of monumentalism or self-conscious profundity, but is at all points marked by a feeling of great spontaneity and joyous conviction. It is marked by unlabored charm as well (as in the apparent citation of a children's song known to us from Humperdinck's use of it in his opera Hänsel und Gretel, which turns up in the middle of Mahler's Goethe setting), and by subtle reminders of the work's significance as a personal expression (as in the near-echoes of Mahler's own Second Symphony in the opening hymn).

The texts themselves tell us perhaps all we need to know about the emotional and spiritual motivation behind this work; its unity, in those respects as well as musically, is confirmed by the reprise of the opening hymn's jubilant theme in the ecstatic coda of the Goethe setting. Related Artists/Companies 100 Years Of Mahler's 'Symphony Of A Thousand' : NPR 100 Years Of Mahler's 'Symphony Of A Thousand' Embed Embed 100 Years Of Mahler's 'Symphony Of A Thousand' 100 Years Of Mahler's 'Symphony Of A Thousand' Embed Embed Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the San Francisco Symphony in a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 8. courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony hide caption toggle caption courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the San Francisco Symphony in a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 8. courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony Hear The Music Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus. Symphony No. 8 in E flat major ("Symphony of a Thousand") [Part 2.

Gerettet ist das edle Glied] Toggle more options Embed Embed <iframe src="" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> On Sept. 12, 1910, Gustav Mahler introduced Symphony No. 8 — a massive, hulking work featuring an enormous double chorus and the largest orchestra ever put on stage at the time. Given its scale, Mahler's publicist quickly dubbed it the "Symphony of a Thousand." Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony, recently won a Grammy for his recording of Symphony No. 8. But he tells NPR's Guy Raz that he didn't understand the symphony the first time he heard it. "I thought it sounded like the most cacophonous caterwauling I had ever heard," Thomas says. "There were all sorts of singers screaming at the top of their voices and instruments playing way out of their comfort zones, and I thought it was the most grotesque assemblage of noises I had ever heard." Many years later, Thomas says, his feelings changed.

"I began to realize the incredible depth of humanity that the piece has — how much humor, how much wit, how much parody, how much astonishing inventiveness. There are surprising illuminations of the text. ... I hadn't experienced those things before." Mahler had written large-scale symphonies before, but this piece was of unprecedented proportions. Article continues after sponsorship "People perceived that this piece was a major cultural event," Thomas says, "and people were coming from all around the world to hear it." Symphony No. 8 takes its text from the closing scene of Goethe's Faust, with its theme of divine redemption and elaborate characters and scenes. The symphony itself is equally elaborate, powerful and emotional. Thomas says it comes close to what a Mahler opera might have sounded like had he written one in his lifetime. "In this kind of classical music," Thomas says, "the shape of the music, the structure of the music, the architecture of the music is in a way the most powerful emotional aspect.

Because you have the beautiful melodies, you have the moving harmonies, you have the amazing orchestration — all these things — but then you have what happens to these things, how they are transformed, how they are brought back." Related NPR Stories On March 2, 1916, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed the American premiere of "The Symphony of a Thousand." Who composed this work? | Historical Society of Pennsylvania On March 2, 1916, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed the American premiere of "The Symphony of a Thousand." Who composed this work? Printer-friendly version Home › Blogs › Question of the Week › On March 2, 1916, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed the American premiere of "The Symphony of a Thousand." Who composed this work? On March 2, 1916, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed the American premiere of "The Symphony of a Thousand." Who composed this work? 2016-03-07 09:37 Philadelphia Answer: Gustav Mahler Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was an Austrian composer and conductor. He created his Symphony No.

8 in E Flat major, also called the "Symphony of Thousand," in 1906. Often hailed as one of his greatest works, Symphony No. 8 was first performed in Munich, Germany, on September 12, 1910. It was a massive and demanding work that required multiple choruses, a number of soloists, and a 100+ piece orchestra. Prior to coming to the United States, Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski had heard the symphony performed in Germany. Once he had established himself with the orchestra, he sought to bring the "Symphony of a Thousand" to America. His persistence paid off when he conducted the piece in Philadelphia to droves of eager listeners in early March 1916. In a note to audiences about the symphony, Stokowski wrote: "For six years I have wished to produce the work of Mahler, but not until now have I had the adequate resources.

I do not know how sufficiently to thank all who have co-operated, and especially the directors of the Orchestra for their generosity and large vision." A few items on Mahler's 8th Symphony and it's first American performance in Philadelphia are available in the HSP collection of Academy of Music programs, playbills, and scrapbooks (#3150) . Additional photos of the Philadelphia Orchestra, its musicians and conductors, can also be found in the Philadelphia Record photograph morgue (V07) . The Los Angeles Philharmonic Plays Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ in an Amphitheater as Big as the Music - The New York Times The New York Times Music |An Epic Symphony, a Legion of Musicians and an Amphitheater Up to the Task Search Continue reading the main story LOS ANGELES — Of all the places to perform Mahler’s sprawling, 80-minute “Symphony of a Thousand,” scored for a massive orchestra, two choruses and nine vocal soloists, the outdoor, amplified Hollywood Bowl might seem the least suitable.

Yet on Tuesday Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a vibrant performance of this ecstatic and metaphysical work at the Hollywood Bowl here on a balmy night. And, to my surprise, it was refreshing and moving to hear the piece at one of the world’s largest amphitheaters before an enthusiastic audience. During my many trips to Los Angeles, I had never made it to the Hollywood Bowl. Both this facility, which opened in 1922 but has gone through several renovations since then, and the scene this concert generated were fascinating. The Hollywood Bowl presents pop and classical music. The Los Angeles Philharmonic offers a summer series, and there are also concerts by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. The seating area can accommodate 18,000 people, and some seats are in small boxes where makeshift tables can be set up for a picnic dinner. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Pop concerts can fill the place. But the Philharmonic’s programs tend to draw only 4,000 to 5,000, on average. The Mahler performance attracted 9,128, according to the Bowl’s tally.

In the park outside the Bowl before the concert, the mood was festive, with snack bars, restaurants and musical groups, including a string quintet playing Mozart. I am no fan of amplification, but the sound system at the Hollywood Bowl is quite good. To make the immense stage and seating area feel more intimate, there are two enormous video screens on either side of the proscenium, carrying close-up images of the performers and, on this night, English subtitles to translate the Latin and German texts. Photo Esa-Pekka Salonen directing the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Mahlers Symphony of a Thousand at the Hollywood Bowl. Credit Stephanie Diani for The New York Times An outdoor, amplified performance of this daunting work, formally Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in E flat, is not an occasion for close critical scrutiny. Still, Mr. Salonen led an urgent, sweeping and nuanced account of the score. The piece was dubbed the “Symphony of a Thousand” by the agent who arranged its 1910 premiere in Munich, conducted by Mahler. For that first performance Mahler assembled a roster of choristers and orchestra players that numbered just over 1,000.

But he disliked the nickname and the “Barnum & Bailey methods” used in promoting the work, as he wrote at the time. Naturally, there is a bit of Barnum & Bailey pizazz in performing the Eighth Symphony in an amphitheater. Still, Mahler might have been touched by the populist trappings of this concert and the sight of thousands of people enjoying dinners of roasted chicken, pasta, salad and wine, and then turning their attention to a symphony that juxtaposes the sacred and the secular, eternal life and eternal love, as Mahler described it. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy In keeping with recent practice, for this performance Mr. Salonen had a more manageable roster of performers: the 100-member Los Angeles Master Chorale (Grant Gershon, music director); the 75-member Los Angeles Children’s Chorus (Anne Tomlinson, artistic director); the Philharmonic, 122 players strong; and the 8 vocal soloists, for a total of 305.

Part 1 of the symphony, about 30 minutes long, is a setting of the liturgical Latin text “Veni, Creator Spiritus.” With its driving rhythmic vitality and restless energy, the movement is like some apotheosis of a celestial dance in celebration of eternal life. The long, episodic Part 2 turns to the corollary subject of transcendent and timeless love. In this part Mahler sets the metaphysical final episode of Goethe’s “Faust,” in which the title character, now 100, achieves salvation. Mahler recalled in an account of the work’s genesis that he composed it in, for him, an astoundingly short burst of creative inspiration, mostly in 1906. “I saw the whole piece immediately before my eyes, and only needed to write it down, as though it were being dictated to me,” he wrote. There is little trace of the tortured, bitterly ironic Mahler in this work, perhaps his least convoluted and most openhearted symphony. Mr. Salonen’s performance managed to convey the piece as a whole, as a cogent entity.

While the sudden emotional shifts of the music came through, both the passages of ruminative quiet and the tumultuous outbursts, so did the compelling narrative arc. Maybe it was the informal outdoor atmosphere, but this epic symphony just swept right by, seeming almost succinct. The soloists were excellent: the sopranos Christine Brewer, Elza van den Heever and Stacey Tappan; the altos Nancy Maultsby and Elena Manistina; the tenor Anthony Dean Griffey; the baritone Alan Held; and the bass John Relyea. And Mr. Salonen seemed elated by the audience’s ovation. This and Thursday’s repeat performance are his last concerts at the Hollywood Bowl as the Philharmonic’s music director: he steps down next spring, at the end of the season. Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” will be performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl; laphil.org. A version of this review appears in print on , on Page E5 of the New York edition with the headline: An Epic Symphony, a Legion of Musicians and an Amphitheater Up to the Task. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Question: Who wrote The Symphony of a Thousand?
Answer: Mahler