When the S.C. Philharmonic played Mahler’s First Symphony on May 2nd it just missed the national MahlerFest that took place a couple of weeks later. Orchestras from Richmond to Knoxville to Austin to Seattle performed most of Mahler’s symphonies that weekend. Meantime at Carnegie Hall (where Mahler conducted the New York Philharmonic a century ago) Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez led a ten-concert overview of Mahler’s symphonic works and orchestral songs with the Staatskapelle Berlin.

That’s a lot of notes in ten days. How did the orchestra and singers hold up? In his review, Alex Ross points out how fatigue and possibly injuries affected the performances. You can read all about it in the New Yorker Magazine online.
 

The season’s Mahler piece-de-resistance, however, happens this week, June 24-27, when Lorin Maazel leads the New York Philharmonic and a battery of vocal soloists and ensembles in the “Symphony of a Thousand,” the Eighth Symphony in E-flat. You can learn more here.

There are four performances of the “Thousand” and apparently they mark Maazel’s final performances as Music Director. All are sold out. But you can catch it on the radio Thursday night, June 25, at WQXR-FM, or probably download it as a podcast later from the Philharmonic’s website. Should you be one of the lucky ones to make it to Carnegie Hall, don’t forget to go to the potty before going in the hall; there’s no late seating, no intermission, and the symphony runs well over an hour.

Live performances of the “Thousand” don’t happen every day, but often show up on special occasions like this year, the 100th anniversary of its composition. The first performance was in Munich in 1910, and because there were over a thousand singers and instrumentalists, Mahler’s publisher began calling it the “Symphony of a Thousand,” and the title stuck.

Here’s the actual instrumentation, from Wikipedia:

Woodwinds*
2 Piccolos (several to a part)
4 Flutes
4 Oboes
English horn
Clarinet in E-flat, doubled throughout
3 Clarinets in B-flat and A
Bass Clarinet in B-flat and A
4 Bassoons
Contrabassoon

Brass
8 Horns in F
4 Trumpets in F and B-flat
4 Trombones
Tuba

Percussion
Timpani
Bass Drum
3 pairs of Cymbals
Triangle
Tam-tam
Deep Bells in A and A-flat
Glockenspiel   

Keyboards
Celesta
Piano
Harmonium
Organ

Offstage instruments
4 Trumpets in F (several to a part)
3 Trombones

Vocal parts
First Soprano (Magna Peccatrix)
Second Soprano (Una poenitentium)
Third Soprano (Mater gloriosa)
First Alto (Mulier Samaritana)
Second Alto (Maria Aegyptiaca)
Tenor (Doctor Marianus)
Baritone (Pater ecstaticus)
Bass (Pater profundus)
Boys' Choir
Mixed Choirs I, II

Strings
2 Harps (several to a part)
Mandolin (several to the part)
Violins I, II
Violas
Violoncellos
Double Basses   

Note by Mahler: “When large choirs of voices and strings are used, doubling of the first chair of woodwinds is recommended.”

And don’t forget the pipe organ and mandolin. In Mahler’s other symphonies, the singing is scattered throughout, but here the entire symphony is sung with the orchestra. The texts are a curious but effective mix of Latin hymns and Goethe. The latter is from “Faust” (What else! It’s Mahler!), and deeply explores another of life’s big questions, immortality. Wikipedia has a thoughtful and concise discussion of the text at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_(Mahler).

The Dover Edition of the full score is available free online. Take a look. It’s only 276 pages long. Wonder if Maazel will conduct from memory?

I’ve never conducted or played the “Thousand” or even heard it in person, but will catch Thursday night’s performance on my iPhone. WQXR-FM broadcasts New York Philharmonic concerts most Thursday nights, and you can tune in online from your computer, or even better, on one of many radio apps for the iPhone. WQRX-FM is included in both AOLRadio and WunderRadio apps. And, you can even go to the bathroom during the symphony with the little phone nestled in your pocket.

With a good headset or sound dock, the High Definition radio sound is terrific, and it comes in fine on either WiFi or the 3G network. BTW, both of those apps contain a slew of great music stations -- and the usual bunch of not so great. Coupled with one of the many NPR apps, my iPhone has dramatically changed the way I listen to music. Rarely a free night goes by that doesn’t find me surfing a bunch of stations for the most interesting programs. If nothing strikes my fancy, I just press the iPod icon and go from there.

Speaking of NPR, does anyone else remember when NPR broadcast full-length orchestra concerts almost every night, the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland, Minnesota, St. Louis and others? Their current default classical programming in South Carolina is really lightweight (OK, it’s downright lame), though most of us still support their stations, of course. Frankly, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of good music radio stations around the nation that do their own programming, much of it vastly more interesting and innovative than NPR’s fare.

For example, I began last Saturday night with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. It was a full-length concert from Carnegie Hall carried by KUSC-FM, (the fine station from that west coast USC–light years better than our little thing here). It included Eliot Carter’s First Symphony, and old friend I hadn’t met up with in decades. One of my favorite Virginia stations (WHRO-FM) does a “new releases” survey every Saturday night, and switching there, I was rewarded with Kenneth Leighton’s Symphony No. 2 (Sinfonia mystica, by one of Britain’s most brilliant post-war composers). It was a wonderful new recording by the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales. The program director at the Virginia station is a very smart guy who serves up extraordinarily interesting music and performances most every evening.

Speaking of the British Broadcasting Company Orchestras (there are several of them), does anyone else remember when American broadcasting networks had their own symphony orchestras? Most of the world still has them, throughout Europe, Japan and Australia. As a kid I listened to the NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini on Sunday afternoons, if memory serves, on a radio about the size of a refrigerator. Whatever happened to our broadcasting company orchestras?

Oh, that’s right: money… profit… the bottom line… the music “biz.” The very idea of an NBC or CBS Symphony Orchestra must seem, well, “quaint” to most people these days, much as the Geneva Conventions seemed “quaint” to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

If Mahler (and much more) on the iPhone interests you, be sure to check into http://www.instantencore.com/. You will be delighted to see a big selection of great performances from many American orchestras just waiting for your little iPhone, iPod or any similar gadget.

Including one of the very latest iPhone applications: The New York Philharmonic app!