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Press Releases
Boston Philharmonic Orchestra April 14 Concert: Mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly & Tenor Stefan Vinke headline Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde
BOSTON, MA— Mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly and tenor Stefan Vinke, the world’s most celebrated performers of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth)—a symphony based on seven Chinese poems from the Tang Dynasty translated into German—will be the featured soloists at the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra’s (BPO) final 2022-23 season concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall on Friday, April 14, 2023, at 8 PM. The program opens with Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, “Unfinished,” one of Conductor Benjamin Zander’s favorite pieces. He will elaborate on both pieces during his popular “Guide to the Music” talk at 6:45 PM, preceding the concert. A live stream of the concert is also available for those who are unable to attend in person and wish to watch from home.
Das Lied von der Erde is widely considered Mahler's most supreme creation, a symphony of voice and orchestra that Mahler did not live to hear, having died six months before its first performance. It reflects Mahler’s life-long preoccupations: the transitory nature of earthly things, the intoxication of love, the horrifying irony with which death mocks all human endeavor, and the ultimate need for everyone to surrender his attachments to this world and accept what is to come. It is also commonly acknowledged that there are few pieces more transcendent than the "Abschied" (“Farewell”), the song cycle’s long final movement.
Inspired by the book Die Chinesische Flote (The Chinese Flute) by Hans Bethge, a volume of 83 poems of ancient Chinese poetry paraphrased from Chinese into German, the symphony is composed of six songs based on seven poems by four Chinese poets from the Tang Dynasty. Although captivated by the verses’ vision of earthly beauty and transience, Mahler initially put the book aside, but repeatedly tapped the book’s poetic images throughout his life, especially the Chinese metaphor of “journeying to the mountains” for death. Not only did he love the mountains, but he had also always imagined himself as a wanderer.
Like Das Lied von der Erde, Schubert never heard his Symphony No. 8 performed, which provides a certain symmetry to the concert. Its two movements were discovered more than thirty years after his death in composer Anselm Hüttenbrenner’s study.
“No one knows why Schubert failed to finish this symphonic torso of almost heavenly beauty, even though he lived for six more years after writing it,” says Zander. “Although speculation has been as endless as it is fruitless, there is no doubt that it has deservedly become one of the most beloved works in the classical canon, and, after the Beethoven Fifth, the one that everybody recognizes.”
Mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly was made a DBE (Dame of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), England’s highest honor, in 2017, after achieving the level of CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2010. She is a fellow at the Royal College of Music in London, where she also studied, and the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2012 Singer Award. Her recordings of Das Lied von der Erde with two of the leading conductors of the day—Vladimir Jurowski and the Berlin Philharmonic in 2018 and Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the London Philharmonic in 2011—point to her reputation as the era’s greatest interpreter of the role. Of her 2018 London performance in Das Lied von der Erde, The Times of London wrote, “...but it was the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly who carried the piece’s emotional weight. Nowhere more so than in the expansive ‘Abschied,’ which turns to look death in the face…As Connolly sang the final dying words of acceptance, it truly felt as if we had touched on something transcendent, profound, sublime.”
Heldentenor Stefan Vinke is renowned worldwide as an interpreter of Wagner’s great tenor roles, performing the title roles of Tristan, Siegfried, Tannhäuser, Parsifal, Lohengrin, Rienzi, and also Siegmund Die Walküre, Siegfried Götterdammerung, Erik Der Fliegende Holländer, and Walther von Stolzing Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He has performed in the Ring cycle at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden with Sir Antonio Pappano, the Metropolitan Opera, New York with Philippe Jordan, Wiener Staatsoper and Bayerische Staatsoper under Kiril Petrenko and Deutsche Oper with Donald Runnicles. Bachtrack, the world's largest site for live and streamed classical music, opera and dance, wrote in its review of his performance as Siegfried in a 2019 production of Götterdammerüng, "I don’t think there’s another tenor in the world who can hit the levels Vinke does and make it sound so casual."
Ticket Information
Tickets are $115, $90, $60, and $30, with $10 student tickets; the live stream is $20 for general admission, $10 for students, and $40 for supporters. Tickets are available at www.bostonphil.org or by calling 617-236-0999. View ticket policies at https://www.bostonphil.org/concerts/ticket-policies. Currently Symphony Hall does not require proof of vaccination, a negative test result, or masks, but masks are recommended. For up-to-the-minute coronavirus updates visit https://www.bostonphil.org/concerts/experience/virus.
About the Boston Philharmonic
Founded by Benjamin Zander in 1979 and still under his leadership, the Boston Philharmonic is composed of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO), the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (BPYO), and its robust series of Crescendo Education and Community Engagement programs. Its mission is to share the vibrancy of classical music with new and existing audiences, aspiring to expand the limits of possibility to reinvigorate the classical music experience for audiences and players alike.
As one of Boston’s premier orchestras, the BPO features professional, student and amateur musicians who perform inspiring renditions of celebrated masterworks in Boston’s most storied concert halls. The BPYO offers year-long, tuition-free orchestral and leadership training at the highest level for talented musicians between age 12 and 21. The Crescendo Education and Community Engagement programs provide high quality music education for children who would otherwise not have access, often serving the most disadvantaged, at-risk, and under-resourced children in the city.
About Benjamin Zander
For more than 50 years, Benjamin Zander has occupied a unique place as a master teacher, a deeply insightful and probing interpreter, and a profound source of inspiration for audiences, as well as students, professional musicians, corporate leaders, politicians, and more. He has persistently engaged some of the most well-informed musical and public intellectuals in a quest for insight and understanding into the Western musical canon and the underlying religious, social, and political issues that inspired its creation.
For more than 25 years, Zander has also enjoyed a unique relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra, recording a series of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies. High Fidelity named the recording of Mahler’s 6th as Best Classical Recording of 2002; the 3rd was awarded Critic’s Choice by the German Record Critics; and Mahler 9th and 2nd and Bruckner’s 5th recordings were all nominated for Grammy Awards.
Zander enjoys an international career as a leadership speaker, with several keynote speeches at the World Economic Forum in Davos and at TED. His best-selling book, The Art of Possibility, co-authored with his former wife and leading psychotherapist Rosamund Zander, has been translated into 18 languages.
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