Mahler, Grandiose

Wednesday September 28, 2005	7:30 pm	Le Conseil des arts de Montréal en tournée Église Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs
Friday September 30, 2005	7:30 pm	Great concert Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste
Sunday October 2, 2005	3:00 pm	Le Conseil des arts de Montréal en tournée; part of the 7th Festival d’automne by Orgue et couleurs [No pre-concert conference] Église Saint-Nom-de-Jésus

For the first time since it began its landmark Mahler cycle in 2001, the OM juxtaposes the visionary music of this composer with the music of our time, composed almost a century later. It is the OM’s cherished dual mission to disseminate the different trends in contemporary music and explore the orchestral genius of Mahler, who has become the hallmark of the OM’s reputation in the past few years. This concert will launch the orchestra’s 25th season while reaffirming its ideal to embrace the future.

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The program begins with Wagner’s Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg), full of exuberant joy and impressive solemnity, but also suffused with emotion and tenderness. Two important dimensions of the Wagnerian universe, the earth-bound and the spiritual, are also found in Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, which opens with a lengthy funeral march but which ends in joy and celebration. The fourth movement, a sublime Adagietto for strings and harp, was made famous in Visconti’s film Death in Venice (1973).