Thursday, 6/4/09, 8 p.m.

Host Frank Dominguez takes you to Charleston, SC to hear Emmanuel Villaume conduct the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra and soloists Russell Thomas, tenor, and Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano, in Gustav Mahler’s epic “song –symphony” Das Lied von der Erde - “The Song of the Earth.” We’ll also hear the orchestra join the Festival’s longtime resident chorus, the Westminster Choir, in a fascinating program that pairs Bach’s great Cantata No. 4, Christ lag in todesbanden, “Christ lay in the bonds of death,” with three remarkable sacred cantatas by German composer Dietrich Buxtehude, born a half-century before Bach. Andrew Megill is the conductor in a concert recorded at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Charleston.

Mahler
Buxtehude and Bach


About Das Lied von der Erde

Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Earth”) is a traversal of the life cycle, from drunken youth through weary resignation to final passing, written when the composer believed he was dying. Many regard this fusion of symphony and song as Mahler’s masterpiece. The text – a set of 8th-century Chinese poems by Li-Tai-Po, Chang-Tsi, Mong-Kao-Jen and Wang-Sci, all translated by Hans Bethge in 1907 – is a meditation on life’s transience. So personal is this farewell to the world that Mahler thought it too intimate to present in public and filed the score away following its completion in 1908. Six months after Mahler’s death in 1911, Bruno Walter, his most trusted interpreter, finally premiered it, though with misgivings, calling it not only Mahler’s most intimate piece, but “perhaps the most personal work in music.”

(from the Spoleto Program Guide)

Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra

The Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra is newly formed each year through nationwide auditions. The orchestra is made up of young professionals and advanced students from around the United States and across the globe.