The Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra

Austrian Evening

The main program of the Austrian Evening at the Slovak Philharmonic is one of the most remarkable musical works of the 20th Century. Even though Gustav Mahler’s 9th Symphony written at the beginning of the last century arises from the position of musical Romanticism, it partly turns in the direction of the superseding aesthetics of the Avant-Garde. Mahler’s monumental Symphony is introduced by a work of the living Austrian composer Edwin Baumgartner.

All debates, controversy and dictation about the “programability” or “absoluteness” of music also concern the search for musical motifs and impulses. The Austrian composer Edwin Baumgartner agrees with Gustav Mahler’s claim that “a symphony must embrace the whole world and even outer space and author is a kind of heaven-sent and endowed mean of registering impulses from outside”. Nearly all his compositions, mostly chamber works, get their inspiration from outside music. His job is to retell these stories in the understandable system of music. This is the job of the composer. Baumgartner himself, as an active cultural journalist, has the possibility to come into contact with various subjects, logically resulting in the desire to transform these subjects into a non-verbal means of understanding, that is, where not only a single meaning exists.

The orchestral prelude, more a nocturne, titled Traumzeit Nr. 1, falls undoubtedly into this category of musical projects. In the world of dreams and stargazing the sharp and concrete borders between reality and make-believe, musical and non-musical,
material and spiritual, disappear… We find ourselves in a neutral state, a space open on all sides, in time without time, in a “Traumzeit”. In “dreamtime”, where one can find motifs. Gustav Mahler’s music moves us into a similar state. In his case, however, we can call it a musical pun: Mahler’s “traumzeit” is not a time of dreams and stargazing, but a period of permanent life trauma. Mahler was a typical example of a composer from an exhausted era in the development of European culture. Everything was lively, sprightly, decorated and silky but at the same time it was evident that everything would die. This is what Mah - ler’s music is like. Everything about it is paradoxical.

Within a few minutes he spontaneously uses the rudimentary vocabulary of the coachman and the sophisticated rhetoric of the philosopher. In his symphonies hundreds of voices sound and among this din of beautiful texts, cowbells, a wailing mandolin or the ominous blow of a hammer is heard, clearly bringing the news of nihilism. The Ninth Symphony is the closing confession. It is another of the legendary “Ninths” (Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner). The number nine also figures in data about the registration of this work into the music annals: it was 1909… The Ninth Symphony is a conscious road to extinction. In the first movement Mahler paraphrases Beethoven’s Piano Sonata “Les adieux”. But while Beethoven’s work looks forward to a return, Mahler’s road doesn’t lead back. In the finale it leads to a fervid prayer, a desperate confession and then a quiet nihilism. It fades away, departs, vanishes…

The two outer movements of the Ninth Symphony are about the eternity born from the halftone sob, transforming in multi-layered situations and leading to the desperately pious, exalting gesture at its closure. The two middle movements are a kind of human tragic-comedy filled with cynicism, sarcasm, affectation, evil carnival masks dancing a mad ländler. At moments, however, the voice of a confused human and his song about an eternal yearning and tranquillity sounds in this massive flow of images. It is as if the Ninth Symphony is a time of dreaming. Mahler, however, does not search as there is nothing. He just gives, reminisces and suffers… Igor Javorský