THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2018-2019 61
Program Notes
percussion concerto, written for the soloist Colin
Currie, who appears on tonight’s program. When
performing Switch, Currie has said he feels like
“being trapped inside a pinball machine.’’
Norman describes the 30-minute piece as a game
of control: “Each percussion instrument is a switch
that controls other instruments in specific ways,
making them play louder or softer, higher or lower,
freezing them in place and setting them in motion
again. The soloist, dropped into this complex contraption
of causes and effects like the unwitting protagonist
of a video game, must figure out the rules
of this universe on the fly, all while trying to avoid
the rewind-inducing missteps that prevent their
progress from one side of the stage to the other.’’
Instead of being broken into traditional movements,
Switch is a system of different “channels,”
each with its own unique sound world, that are
flipped by the playful snaps of channel-surfing slapsticks
at the back of the stage. When Music Director
Michael Frances first heard Switch, which was
first performed in 2015, he wanted to conduct it at
home.
“I was blown away by it and thought I’d love to
bring it to Florida,’’ he said. “It’s brilliantly virtuosic
and extremely visual. It goes along and something
clicks and then it goes to another level. It’s a tour de
force but with a very poetic ending that has a great
effect on the audience.’’
GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)
SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN D MAJOR, TITAN
Duration: ca. 53 minutes
“My time will come,” Mahler predicted in response
to criticism of his music. A century ago, the public
puzzled over his sprawling sound world, where
beautiful and grotesque ideas seem to float
aimlessly, crash into one another and stretch
the limits of the imagination – if not patience.
Today, thanks to such advocates as Leonard
Bernstein, Mahler’s nine completed symphonies
are firmly rooted in the orchestral garden, and often
celebrated as highlights of a season.
If anything, Mahler gives concertgoers their money’s
worth. His symphonies aren’t just enormous in size,
but in the depth and dimension of their message.
Each symphony stands alone as an individual work,
and together they form a life cycle from birth to
death and beyond. “The symphony must be like the
world,” Mahler said. “It must embrace everything.”
Among Mahlerians, choosing a favorite symphony
is fun (mine is the Third), just as picking the most
difficult to grasp (the Seventh) makes for good
dinner party conversation. But most agree that the
best introduction to Mahler is, fittingly, the First
Symphony, which you will hear tonight.
Completed in 1888, the work is the shortest of the
nine but large in scope, including seven horns, five
trumpets, four trombones, four oboes and four
flutes. Mahler originally called it a “symphonic
poem in five movements,’’ which included the
discarded second movement Blumine (Flower
Piece). The name Titan refers to the 900-page novel
by Jean Paul, although the music has nothing to do
with the book.
The symphony opens quietly and builds momentum
in a crescendo of bird calls and frenzied fanfares,
throwing off balance any preconceived ideas we
might have about symphonic structure. Mahler
wrote on the score that the introduction to the first
movement should convey “the sounds of nature,
not music!’’ A peasant-like dance known as a
Landler dominates the scherzo, and with the end of
this movement we leave the world of light behind.
Darkness descends in the form of a grotesquesounding
variation on the French nursery rhythm
Frere Jacques. This got Mahler into a bit of trouble,
as audiences at the time didn’t know how to
take such a vulgarity, and felt the composer had
overstepped his bounds.
The finale opens with a bolt of lightning – an
explosive cymbal crash that can send unsuspecting
audiences a few inches off their seats. At more than
20 minutes, the longest of the movements brings
together all the earlier elements into a whole, but
not without a fight between contrasting keys that
dissolve into F minor. As the struggle continues,
Mahler goes back to the opening of the symphony
to steal musical snippets before introducing a
barrage of brass that brings the music to a radiant
conclusion in the home key of D major.
Program notes © 2019 by Kurt Loft, a freelance writer
and former music critic for The Tampa Tribune.