Concert Gustav Mahler. Symphony No 8 World famous Mariinsky Ballet and Opera Theatre - Opera and Concert Hall
Schedule for Gustav Mahler. Symphony No 8 2022
Principal Chorus Master: Andrei Petrenko Composer: Gustav Mahler
Orchestra: Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra
Mariinsky Theatre Soloists, Chorus, Children’s Chorus and Symphony Orchestra
Children’s Chorus Master: Dmitry Ralko Principal Chorus Master:
Andrei Petrenko Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Program: Gustav Mahler. Symphony No 8
Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony is often compared and placed
alongside Beethoven’s Ninth and its culminating Ode to Joy.
The composer believed that the Eighth Symphony would become
a lofty ode to mankind, his creative spirit, an ode to beauty and to
Goethe’s “eternal femininity”. It was also conceived by Mahler as
a “symphony of symphonies”, a crowning symphonic epic which
the composer had created over two decades. In other words,
the Eighth Symphony was allotted the role of the finale of
the super-series of all of Mahler’s symphonies. The idea
demanded that the composer find huge performing resources: an enlarged
symphony orchestra, an organ, two mixed choruses, a boys’ chorus and
soloists – three sopranos, two altos, a tenor, a baritone and
a bass. Written in summer 1906, the symphony was first
performed in Munich on 12 September 1910. The premiere met
with triumphant success. With the light hand of the impresario,
the Eighth received the title “Symphony of a Thousand”,
a name rejected by Mahler himself as too much of an advertisement. But at
the same time, the composer underlined the truly universal scale
of his work. In a letter to Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg, Mahler
wrote: “I have just finished my Eighth Symphony – the most
magnificent of anything I have yet written. The work is so unique
in terms of content and form that it is impossible to speak of it, even
in a letter. It seems as if the entire universe begins to
sound and ring; it is not just human voices singing, but the planets
rotating and the sun…” Iosif Raiskin
Schedule for Gustav Mahler. Symphony No 8 2022
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