Symphony records tribute to Mahler legacy

Austrian composer Gustav Mahler used seven ancient Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) poems as the source of text for his masterpiece “Das Lied von der Erde,” or “The Song of the Earth,” completed in 1909.

This year, to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the composer’s death, Deutsche Grammophon will release a new recording of the work performed by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.

It is a major event for the symphony, whose conductor Yu Long has long championed the work.

Ti Gong

Even by Mahler standards, the composition is bleak. It is written for two voices and orchestra, with six songs addressing themes of life and death and the cycle of nature. Some call it Mahler’s farewell; he died two years after its completion.

American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, pioneer of a Mahler revival in the 20th century, called it his “greatest symphony.” But Mahler didn’t number it among his nine fully completed symphonies. Rather, the song cycle stands uniquely apart in the repertory. 

Mahler began the work after the most painful year of his life. In back-to-back tragedies, he was forced to resign as director of the Vienna Court Opera because of anti-Semitism and political intrigue; his eldest daughter died from scarlet fever; and Mahler himself was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect.

He died in 1911, having never heard “Das Lied von der Erde” performed.

The work occupies a special place in the heart of Yu, music director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. It was the piece he proposed for the program of his first major conducting job in Germany some 40 years ago.

That special place has never disappeared. Over the years, Yu has explored many different ways to interpret the work. His devotion to it motivated him to brave coronavirus travel restrictions and other difficulties and bring two American singers and two recording engineers from Deutsche Grammophon to record it with the orchestra in Shanghai late last year.

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The recording, to be released later this year, also includes a piece of the same title by Chinese composer Ye Xiaogang, who was commissioned by Yu in the early 2000s to compose a Chinese response to Mahler, using the same ancient poems Mahler used.

“Das Lied von der Erde” will be the only major Mahler album issued in 2021. 

Festivals and commemorative performances to mark the composer’s anniversary around the world have been canceled one by one because of the pandemic. Most recently in early February, the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam canceled an already delayed Mahler Festival. The much-anticipated plan was to have Mahler’s first six symphonies played by six world-renowned orchestras and top conductors.

The Shanghai recording, too, was almost canceled.

“You can’t imagine what we have been through,” said Zhou Ping, director of Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. “Countless times we have thought: ‘This is not going to work out’ — up until the last minute. One of our American singers was stuck in an airport in Germany when transferring flights.” 

Zhou added: “But nobody in the project ever mentioned giving up. We all took it for granted that this had to be completed for this Mahler tribute year.”

And so it came to pass in December, after American opera singers Michelle DeYoung and Brian Jadge finished 14-day mandatory quarantines in Shanghai.

“It has been a long time since we had a project of this kind,” Yu told Shanghai Daily. 

“One that goes beyond a recording or a concert — one with which we can talk about cultural issues.”

Mahler’s work has been performed and recorded countless times over the years by the world’s top orchestras and singers. It premiered in China in 2002 in a performance by the China Philharmonic Orchestra. 

Yu said he sees this new recording as a platform to discuss cultural understanding and even misunderstanding.

“In our life today, there is so much misunderstanding that stems from culture,” Yu said. “Many people think the Internet makes it easier for people to understand another culture, but I really think much of that ‘understanding’ still comes from a self-centered point of view. That’s not enough. That’s why this project is particularly meaningful now.”

Yu, who studied in Germany and speaks fluent German, experienced that cultural misunderstanding when he tried to find a cultural identity through the Mahler piece when he was in his 20s. He tried to draw out the Chinese factor. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn’t.

“I didn’t realize how difficult the piece was at the time,” he recalled.

He brought his interest in the work with him when he returned to China in the early 1990s, and scholars debated for years which seven poems Mahler exactly used in the six songs.

Mahler never visited China, though he may have imagined its exoticness. His text source for “Das Lied von der Erde” was Hans Bethge’s “Chinese Flute,” a loose translation and rewriting of other translations of Chinese poems. Since the work was twice translated, it is difficult to pinpoint the original sources. Debate on the origin of two of the poems used in the work continues.

Yu said he realized early that it was best to just treat the lyrics as pure German text because “then I am more free.” 

“Mahler also used some Chinese sounds in the piece, which adds a sense of exoticism,” he said. “But that’s like foreigners using soy sauce in food — it looks like Chinese food, but to Chinese, it isn’t.”

Yu is absorbed by the cultural relationship between Europe and China a century ago, exemplified in the work. But instead of trying to bring Chinese factors to the work, he commissioned Ye for a response piece based on the poems.

“I’m still very proud that I made the decision,” Yu recalled. “It was very successful, especially when you put the two pieces side by side. There is an intriguing color, tonality, structure, emotion and atmosphere stemming from the same text sources, so connected yet so different. You can see how Europeans and the Chinese feel about the same matter.”

He described “Das Lied von der Erde” as an oil painting and Ye’s response as a watercolor painting. They are distinct in the way they present their emotions, especially in the first song.

“Mahler was very direct and full of passion, while the Chinese response is quite reserved,” Yu said.

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In the new recording, American tenor Jadge performs the piece for the first time. He had been learning it for nearly a year ahead of a concert scheduled in Vienna last November, but the performance was canceled.

Jadge said he feels connected to the piece through his work with Opera for Peace, an organization dedicated to uniting the opera world beyond national boundaries.

“This piece is like an early-day collaboration in a way,” he said. “When I sing it, I feel that Mahler really resonated with the Chinese texts, even though they are translated from translations.”

He added: “For the three parts I do, it is like he is waiting for death, but at the same time pretending not to. The singer is drunk most of the time in the songs, but there are also times where he is saying things like: ‘Look at that bird. Oh, it is singing!’ It feels like he is in denial of where he is, but then he comes to a fuller realization throughout the three pieces. By the end, you can’t help by feel terribly sad.”

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Mezzo-soprano DeYoung has sung the piece many times and portrayed the role of Shaman in the world premiere of Tan Dun’s opera “The First Emperor.” But it is her first trip to China.

“I’m personally very fascinated with the things that bring all of humanity together and make us one,” she said. 

“That makes this piece particularly interesting for me because of its text source,” she said. “Mahler was very fascinated by Eastern and Western civilizations mixed together and the similarities we share. I think in this time of pandemic, it is something that brings the whole world together.”

“Das Lied von der Erde” concludes with the libretto:

Fortune was not kind to me in this world!

Where do I go? I go, I wander in the mountains.

I seek peace for my lonely heart.

I wander homeward, to my abode!

I’ll never wander far.

Still is my heart, awaiting its hour.

The dear earth everywhere

blossoms in spring and grows green anew!

Everywhere and forever blue is the horizon!

Forever ... Forever ...