I'm a word person. Too often I forget how music can change me, almost instantly. Today I listened to Eric Clapton sing the acoustic version of Layla, what maybe seven times, singing along in the car like a lunatic.
But tonight, well, tonight, friends took my husband and me to the New York Philharmonic to hear Mahler's Eighth Symphony.
My husband calls it German schmaltz, but for me, it was what I needed to leave the stresses of daily life and open my heart to the joy of human creation.
Lorin Maazel is leaving the New York Philharmonic after seven years, to be replaced in September by Alan Gilbert. As a little girl growing up in New York, "Lenny" was the musical director that we all loved. Leonard Bernstein was appointed musical director in 1969 and it was through his Young People's Concerts broadcast monthly that I learned to love classical music.
The stage was so filled with musicians and two choruses that some of the horns had to be situated above the stage. The symphony premiered on September 12, 1910 in Munich and hasn't been performed in New York since October 1976. The only time I had ever heard it performed live was at Louise Davies Hall in San Francisco with one chorus. Tonight at Avery Fisher Hall there were two!
When the symphony first premiered there were 858 singers and 171 instrumentalists on stage with one conductor, Mahler himself. Tonight was not quite there, but certainly, as a farewell performance as musical director, Maazel has chosen an extraordinary piece of music to engineer. Tomorrow night is the final performance, but tonight as soon as the last note had finished ringing through the hall, the entire audience jumped to their feet and began to applaud and hoot wildly.
Thank you, Rebecca and Leslie, for your generosity in sharing this evening with us.
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