Mahler Vita Celestiale
Verona's outstanding live music venue, Teatro Filarmonico, hosts a concert featuring two of the best-loved works by a pair of leading 19th-century composers, Franz Schubert and Gustav Mahler. Performed by the Fondazione Arena di Verona Orchestra, the concert opens with a rendition of Schubert's famous Symphony no. 8 in B minor, D. 759, otherwise known as his 'Unfinished Symphony'. Following an interval, the musical programme continues with Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G major, Das himmlische Leben, most frequently translated into English as 'The Heavenly Life' and into Italian as Vita Celestiale.
Composed between 1818 and 1825, only two movements Schubert's Unfinished Symphony were completed in a fully orchestrated form with other sections laid out only in sketches. Musicologists have a complete piano version of a scherzo available to work from, too, but only fragments of an orchestral score for this part of the work have been found. In fact, much of what survives of Symphony no. 8 was left unheard by audiences for decades, long after the composer's death in 1828. One of Schubert's friends, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, kept what the composer had written in its most complete version tucked away in his studio. Schubert had sent Hüttenbrenner sections of the score after he gained an honorary diploma from the Graz Musical Society in 1823. However, it wasn't until Hüttenbrenner was visited by the conductor Johann von Herbeck that the two completed movements in his possession were revealed. They were subsequently premiered on 17 December 1865 in Vienna, using another Schubert composition to serve as a finale.
Mahler's fourth symphony is unusual insofar as it presents a child's vision of heaven through vocals performed by a soprano. Written by the German composer in 1899 and the early part of 1900, the work was first staged in Munich on 25 November 1901. The symphony consisted of six movements, culminating in Das himmlische Leben, a section that returns to the opening key of G major for the finale. The second movement is noteworthy because it features a solo violin which is tuned higher than convention dictates for most orchestral performances, thereby suggesting the folk style of a country fiddler. Mahler also makes great use of tempo, particularly in the third movement, which begins as a calming adagio but which soon shifts pace before returning to a more sedate speed once more.
Teatro Filarmonico constitutes a superb auditorium to experience two remarkable and distinct pieces of music by such renowned masters of their art. Mahler Vita Celestiale will undoubtedly offer listening pleasure to all who attend.