At the head of an army of performers, Kent Tritle takes on Mahler's Eighth.
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| Gustav Mahler conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Painting by Max Oppenheimer © 1935 Estate of the Artist. |
You don't hear the Mahler Eighth much.
Nicknamed the "Symphony of 1,000", it is the orchestral equivalent of Rabelais' medieval giant Gargantua. It requires two mixed choruses, children’s chorus, eight vocal soloists and an army of musicians with extra brass and wind, organ and a phalanx of strings. The score itself is another giant a 90-minute Pantagruel consisting of just two movements. For reasons known only to himself, Mahler paired the medieval hymn “Veni, creator spiritus” with a setting of the final scene of Part II of Goethe’s Faust, a gauzy exercise in German mysticism that depicts the long-suffering title character’s final transit into Heaven.
