Conductor: Sir Donald Runnicles
Soloist: Ying Fang (Soprano)
Program: Im Sommerwind -Anton Webern
5 songs – Richard Strauss
Symphony no 4 – Gustav Mahler
Concert date 25th September 2024
This was a wonderful program, centred on late romantic Viennese music and a most inspiring and absorbing evening listening to some glorious music.
The evening began with Anton Webern’s Im Sommerwind. Webern composed this piece when he was only 21 years of age. Soon after, he became a student of Schoenberg and became a radical pioneer of atonal expressionist composition and the ’12 tone technique’. This particular work stayed buried with some of his belongings in his garden and was unearthed sometime after his death. It was inspired by a poem by German philosopher, Bruno Wille extolling the glories of nature. It is a beautiful tone poem and very much a romantic idyll. While some experts claim one can hear the later modernist Webern, I certainly couldn’t. It was pure visions of an old-fashioned European summer, (no scorchers or bushfires here!); you could close your eyes and smell a summer’s day and feel the gentle sun shining on your face. Featured instruments are flutes, oboes and unusually two harps. It was a wonderful first act!
The orchestra was then joined on stage by the Chinese Soprano Ying Fang whom we were privileged to hear performing 5 of Richard Strauss’ lieder. Ying Fang is the most elegant singer- hailed as ‘the most gifted Chinese soprano of her generation’ and a principal soloist with the Metropolitan Opera. An amazing performer, her opening song, Morgen, brought tears to my eyes. It is the most beautiful piece which Strauss wrote for his new bride, the singer, Pauline de Anha in 1894, and one of his most famous lieder. It embodies all the composer’s hopes for a happy future, within a three-and-a-half-minute masterpiece. It was so uplifting to see Ying Feng together with Donald Runnicles and the Sydney Symphony create a work of such transporting beauty. Each of the songs was gorgeous but I particularly enjoyed this first one and the final one, Muttertanderlei, a mother praising her beautiful child. I love the soprano voice and Ying Fang’s outstanding performance in these lieder on Wednesday will stay in my mind as a concert highlight. This is not the first time that Donald Runnicles and Ying Fang have collaborated in concert, and their empathy and deep communication was palpable. This was a beautiful and most accomplished performance that touched us, which was clear from the enthusiastic response of the audience!
The major work in this concert was Mahler’s fourth symphony. It is the shortest of all his symphonies, less than one hour in length, is also the most immediately accessible. Mahler told Sibelius in 1907 that ‘a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.’ This symphony seems to celebrate the most joyous and sunny parts of life and is said to be about childhood. The first movement featured cymbals, sleigh bells, triangle, tam-tam, and glockenspiel along with timpani as well as four flutes playing together. For the symphony not to be too loud, Mahler left out the trombones! However, strings featured prominently throughout. The first movement consisted of a whole suite of beautiful tunes; Mahler compared the melodies of the first movement to “a dewdrop on a flower that suddenly illuminated by the sun, bursts into a thousand lights and colours.”; before moving into the second movement featuring concert master Andrew Haveron in the famous violin solo with the violin tuned up a whole note higher. This is meant to represent the fiddler of death even though the music was heavenly and became even more so as we moved into the divine adagio of the third movement – so serene so profound. The fourth movement is built around a song previously written by Mahler in 1892 and featured Ying Fang. Das Himmlische Leben – heavenly life was its title and presents a child’s vision of heaven. The first four lines of the text read:’ We revel in heavenly pleasures, so we shun all that is earthly, No worldly turmoil, Is heard in Heaven’. I felt the text was apt for almost the whole of this fabulous symphony.
In the pre-concert statement, associate principal oboist, Shefali Pryor, mentioned what a privilege it was for the orchestra to work with Sir Donald Runnicles, the principal guest conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra since 2019. He is an amazing conductor and the musical partnership between himself, and his musicians lifted this concert to the sublime. I have to commend, also, the program notes provided for the concerts this year – they have been fabulous!
We are so lucky in Sydney – to have this fabulousHvenue – the Opera House sitting on our beautiful foreshore with its refurbished Concert hall, as well as to have this brilliant orchestra and its world class conductors to enrich the lives of its audience!
