Grand Season Finale:
Masters of Cantabile

People who like Puccini and Mahler tend to be passionate about them, for there are few other composers who move our hearts so directly and intensely. Even Puccini’s first piece, the Preludio Sinfonico, composed when he was only eighteen, has an uncanny way of stirring our emotions. This year is the 150th anniversary of Puccini’s birth, and to celebrate it, Maestro Orent and Jayne West have selected an aria from an opera of his.

Like Puccini’s operas, Mahler’s Symphony #4 in G is meant to go straight to the heart. Here the composer avoids the monumental style of his second (the "Resurrection" Symphony) and third symphonies, creating a briefer work with a lighter texture. Darker emotions and Mahler’s grotesque humor are not banished, but somehow we trust that the outcome will be a happy one. Indeed, it is: in the final movement, using (as he did in the two previous symphonies) a poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, sung by a soprano, Mahler gives us a vision of heavenly bliss seen through the eyes of an innocent child.

 

Paintings by NSO Violinist Melanie Maz will be for sale in the lobby before, during and after the concert. 15 percent of proceeds from sales between April 11th and April 26th will be donated to the NSO.

Click here to order tickets online

Masters of Cantabile
Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 7:30 PM
Rashi Auditorium
15 Walnut Park
Newton, MA 02458
Phone: (617) 965-2555
Website: newtonsymphony.org
E-Mail: [email protected]
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