Saturday, May 5 8PM @ Morrison Center
Sunday, May 6, 2PM @ Morrison Center
PURCHASE TICKETS - SATURDAY
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Boise Sponsor - Howard & Dottie Goldman
Concert Media Sponsor - 
Mahler 2 Sponsors - Mr. & Mrs. Tom Hennessey, Julie Kilgrow & Alan Gardner, Richard A. & SUsan Floriana Riley and Jeff & Jo-Anne Smith
Robert Franz, conductor
Leslie Mauldin, soprano
Michele Detwiler, mezzo-soprano
Boise Philharmonic Master Chorale
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection"
“Ms. Mauldin’s clear soprano and striking physical presence made her seem somehow 4-dimensional to those in the audience; her voice stirred up all manner of feelings – including a nostalgia that hit us right in the solar plexus”
The Idaho Statesman, Knoxville Summer of 1915, Samuel Barber
Leslie Mauldin has performed dynamically and to critical acclaim in many venues, from touring as soprano soloist with the Israeli Philharmonic to a one woman show in Spain, where she attended conservatory. Her work comprises many diverse leading opera and oratorio roles for various companies around the US and abroad, including the title role in “Tosca,” “Violetta” (La Traviata), “Musetta” (La Boheme), “Micaela” (Carmen), “Hanna Glavari” (The Merry Widow), “Donna Anna” (Don Giovanni), “Clorinda” (La Cenerentola), and most recently a guest artist concert for the Idaho Falls Symphony and her debut in the role of Lilli Vanessi (Kate) in “Kiss Me Kate” for the Mount Harrison Heritage Foundation.
Stage and musical direction credits include Suor Angelica, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, La Boheme, and The Mikado. A native of Los Angeles, she has also worked in film and television, and is a member in good standing of Screen Actor’s Guild. Ms. Mauldin also writes shortened operas for outreach production, and directs and teaches summer outreach camps for teens and adults
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Since 2000, Michele Detwiler has sung nearly two dozen roles with regional companies on the West Coast, favoring Mahler, Strauss, Bel Canto and French repertoire. Critics have described her instrument as "amber-voiced", "a velvety mezzo soprano voice with excellent range", with performances being cited as "riveting" and holding"center stage commandingly".
A recent Finalist in the Irene Dalis Vocal Competition, this season she returned to West Bay Opera to debut Preziosilla (La Forza del Destino), to the Boise Philharmonic for the Messiah, and is reprising the role of Suzuki (Madama Butterfly) with both Opera Idaho and Livermoor Valley Opera.
From 2001-2007, she was a Principal Artist and Guest Artist with Opera San Jose where she sang in eighteen productions ranging from lyric to dramatic repertoire. While there she garnered much praise for her portrayal of Elizabeth Proctor (The Crucible), and took on the roles of Carmen, Suzuki, Rosina (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), the title role of La Cenerentola, Dorabella (Cosí fan tutte), Cherubino (Le Nozze di Figaro), Zerlina(Don Giovanni), Stephano (Romeo et Juliette), Siebel, Prince Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus), and Flora (La Traviata) among others. In addition, the mezzo has sung with Sacramento Opera, Opera Idaho, West Bay Opera, Trinity Lyric Opera, San Francisco Lyric Opera, Mission City Opera, Apollo Sierra Opera, the Boise Philharmonic, Auburn Symphony, and Symphony Silicon Valley. Her concert credits include soloist in Bernstein's Candide Suite, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Saint-Säens’Christmas Oratorio, Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, Herzogenberg’s Die Geburt Christi, and Einhorn’s Voices of Light.
Currently, Ms. Detwiler resides in Boise, Idaho with her husband, baritone Jason Detwiler, and their two children.
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Behind The Music
Symphony No. 2 in C Minor (Resurrection)
Gustav Mahler
Born May 7, 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia
Died May 18, 1911, in Vienna, Austria
A partial premiere of the first three movements of this work occurred on March 4, 1895, in Berlin, Germany, by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with the composer conducting. The first performance of the full work was on December 13, 1895, in Berlin, conducted by the composer. It is scored for a gargantuan orchestra made up of four piccolos, four flutes, four oboes, two English horns, two E-flat clarinets, three clarinets, bass clarinet, four bassoons, contrabassoon, ten horns (four used offstage), eight to ten trumpets (four to six used offstage), four trombones, tuba, three timpanists (one of which is only in the final movement), five percussionists (some of which is offstage), organ, at least two harps, and “the largest possible contingent of strings.” The vocal forces consist of mixed chorus, and soprano and alto soloists.
This is the Boise Philharmonic's first performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony.
Collectively, Gustav Mahler’s first five symphonies are known as the Wunderhorn Symphonies because of their use of musical ideas drawn from Mahler’s own settings of Clemens Brentano’s and Achim von Arnim’s poetry published in 1808 under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Youth’s Magic Horn). Mahler found an existential quality to these folk-infused verses that seemed to reach into the very soul of his own musical and personal philosophy. The extent of this self-borrowing is far too extensive to explain fully in this forum, but two of the most successful instances are found in Mahler’s Second Symphony, where his song, “Saint Anthony’s Fish Sermon,” forms the basis of the scherzo and “Primeval Light” serves as the fourth movement.
Gustav Mahler is often said to have had an obsession with death. While that is true, he held an equal fascination with the afterlife. His Fourth Symphony, in its finale, includes a lovely soprano solo to a text that describes an innocent child’s view of “The Heavenly Life,” where all are free from sorrow and need. His numerous songs examine life and the hereafter, most notably in his harrowing Kindertotenlieder (“Songs on the Death of Children”) – but that work is more a study of emotions for those who are living, and not the fate of those who have departed. While writing his First Symphony in 1889 (at the same time as the early sketches of the Second), the subject of death still loomed over Mahler. Moved by an unusual woodcut, he included a movement that represents the death of a hunter, who is almost whimsically carried to his grave by the very forest animals he stalked in life.
In crafting his Second Symphony, Mahler looked back almost a decade to his 1888 symphonic poem entitled Todtenfeier (Funeral Rites). Mahler never felt as if the work could stand on its own. Something more was needed, but the composer could not find it. He continued work on what was to become his Second Symphony, but the catalyst that led to its final form was the death of conductor Hans von Bülow in 1894. Mahler attended the funeral in Hamburg and was moved by Klopstock’s “Resurrection Ode” used in the service. He saw a parallel between the conductor and the fallen hunter, both borne into eternity by the animals (his colleagues).
Mahler suddenly knew the course for his new work. He would use Todtenfeier as the first movement, but the general scheme of the work would be much larger. The hunter’s eternal fate (and that of mankind) would serve as the subject. After a revised version of Todtenfeier, Mahler would include two movements representing memories of the deceased – the first representing happiness and the other depicting the decadence of earthly pursuits (using a grotesque version of “Saint Anthony’s Fish Sermon” from his setting of Des Knaben Wunderhorn). The final two movements would use voices. An alto in the fourth movement would present a child’s vision of heaven, representing blind faith, in an orchestration of his setting of the Wunderhorn song Urlicht (“Primeval Light”). An apocalyptic finale would represent the end of time – complete with recollections of the earlier movements (a la Beethoven’s Ninth), fanfares, and a choral conclusion that, along with alto and soprano soloists, would depict the entry of souls into heaven using Klopstock’s ode with Mahler’s additions. Completed in the autumn of 1894, Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony is transcendent in its profound philosophical insight and its musical directness – and never fails to produce extended ovations after its uplifting finale.
Mahler was quick to present a narrative program for the Second Symphony, but later retracted it in hope that the work would speak for itself. However, his description is the perfect guide for such a long and dynamic work. It is reproduced below in its entirety:
Movement I: “We stand by the coffin of a person well loved. His whole life, his struggles, his passions, his sufferings and his accomplishments on earth once more for the last time pass before us. And now, in this solemn and deeply stirring moment, when the confusions and distractions of everyday life are lifted like a hood from our eyes, a voice of awe-inspiring solemnity chills our heart—a voice that, blinded by the mirage of everyday life, we usually ignore: ‘What next? What is life and what is death? Why did you live? Why did you suffer? Is it all nothing but a huge, frightful joke? Will we live on eternally? Do our life and death have a meaning?’ We must answer these questions in some way if we are to go on living—indeed, if we are to go on dying! He into whose life this call has once sounded must give an answer. And this answer I give in the final movement.”
Movement II: “A memory, a ray of sunlight, pure and cloudless, out of the departed's life. You must surely have had the experience of burying someone dear to you, and then, perhaps, on the way back, some long forgotten hour of shared happiness suddenly rose before your inner eye, sending, as it were, a sunbeam into your soul—not overcast by any shadow—and you almost forgot what had just taken place.”
Movement III: “When you awaken from that blissful dream and are forced to return to this tangled life of ours, it may easily happen that this surge of life ceaselessly in motion, never resting, never comprehensible, suddenly seems eerie, like the billowing dancing figures in a brightly lit ballroom that you gaze into from outside in the dark—and from a distance so great that you can no longer hear the music. Then the turning and twisting movement of the couples seems senseless. You must imagine that, to one who has lost his identity and his happiness, the world looks like this—distorted and crazy, as if reflected in a concave mirror. Life then becomes meaningless. Utter disgust for every form of existence and evolution seizes him in an iron grip, and he cries out in a scream of anguish.”
Movement IV: “The moving voice of naive faith sounds in our ears. ‘I am from God and will return to God. The dear God will give me a light, will light me to eternal blessed life!’”
Movement V: “Once more we must confront terrifying questions. The movement starts with the same dreadful scream of anguish that ended the scherzo. The voice of the Caller is heard. The end of every living thing has come, the Last Judgment is at hand, and the horror of the Day of Days has come upon us. The earth trembles; the Last Trump sounds; the graves burst open; all the creatures struggle out of the ground, moaning and trembling. Now they march in a mighty procession: rich and poor, peasants and kings, the whole church with bishops and popes. All have the same fear, all cry and tremble alike because, in the eyes of God, there are no just men. The cry for mercy and forgiveness sounds fearful in our ears. The wailing becomes gradually more terrible. Our senses desert us; all consciousness dies as the Eternal Judge approaches. The trumpets of the Apocalypse ring out. Finally, after all have left their empty graves and the earth lies silent and deserted, there comes only the long-drawn note of the bird of death. Even it finally dies.”
”What happens now is far from expected. Everything has ceased to exist. The gentle sound of a chorus of saints and heavenly hosts is then heard. Soft and simple, the words gently swell up: ‘Rise again, yes, you will rise again.’ Then the glory of God comes into sight. A wondrous light strikes us to the heart. All is quiet and blissful. Lo and behold: there is no judgment, no sinners, no just men, no great and no small; there is no punishment and no reward. A feeling of overwhelming love fills us with blissful knowledge and illuminates our existence.”
©2011 Orpheus Music Prose & Craig Doolin
www.orpheusnotes.com
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