David Dalle
Thursday March 6th, 2025 with David Dalle
What I need right now, Mahler's 3rd symphony.

I admit, today's program is purely about what I need. In this horrifying, heartbreaking world, where Israel commit genocide, and a disintegrating US attacks its friends and wants to ally with the worst of tyrants... I need this music. Gustav Mahler's 3rd symphony, his largest and perhaps most radical symphony. Composed over 1895-6, it received its premiere in 1903. Mahler in one of his meetings with Jean Sibelius told him "the symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything!" This symphony definitely does that! It is in two parts with six movements including voices in two of them, an alto solo in the 4th and the alto joined by a children's choir in the 5th. The first movement alone is the first part and it is huge, between 30 and 35 minutes in most performances, and the entire symphony lasting 95-100 minutes. In its huge canvas, it tries to encompass the whole world. The first movement is primordial, elemental nature, sounding like the creation of the world with the movement of the Earth's crust and rise and fall of mountains. The second and third movement is a more bucolic and rustic view of nature, more familiar to 19th century listeners. In the fourth movement, the alto sings a famous poem, the "Midnight Song", from Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" where Zarathustra sings of the world's deep pain and even deeper joy. "O Man! Take heed! What says the deep midnight? "I slept, I slept —, from a deep dream have I awoken: — the world is deep, and deeper than the day has thought. Deep is its pain —, joy — deeper still than heartache. Pain says: Pass away! But all joy seeks eternity —, — seeks deep, deep eternity!" The 5th movement, the shortest, with its children's choir is a song of innocence and forgiveness. But it is the symphony's final movement which is most needed today. A large adagio, it is an all-encompassing expression of love. To me, this IS the divine love that Sufi poets write about, and Sufi singers sing. A magnificent summation of 100 minutes of glorious music! 2025 marks the centenary of the high-priest of Modernism: composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. We will hear his wonderful 2001 recording with the Vienna Philharmonic. Boulez was not familiar with Mahler as a young man, as Mahler was unknown in France after WWII. He came to Mahler retrospectively in a way. He was devoted to the 2nd Viennese School of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. Boulez learned about Mahler when he learned more about their precursors, and their reverence for Mahler. In fact, Schoenberg was converted to Mahler by his 3rd symphony which he ecstatically told Mahler revealed to him "a human being, drama, truth, the most ruthless truth!"