Awaiting you at the Zamet Center on September 23, as part of the European Capital of Culture – Rijeka 2020 project, is an incomparable concert experience and colossal musical achievement featuring a large extended orchestra, mixed choir, and two top soloists!
The Rijeka Symphony Orchestra and the Rijeka Opera Choir, in cooperation with the Croatian Radio and Television Choir and Symphony Orchestra, will perform Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony under the conductorship of maestro Philipp von Steinaecker, Rijeka’s new chief guest conductor. The composer included human voices in this work, in the style of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Soprano Kristina Kolar, national opera principal, and mezzo-soprano Ivana Srbljan, principal of the Rijeka Opera, will perform.
Symphony No. 2 (1887-1894) by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), is best known as the “Resurrection” (“Auferstehung”). The title is associated with Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s spiritual song “Die Auferstehung,” the text of which the composer uses in the Symphony’s finale. The work, in a sense, is Mahler’s response to the metaphysical challenge posed by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Originally, the composer wrote a magnificent, single-movement, epic-tragic piece called “Totenfeier,” or “Funeral Rites” (“Allegro maestoso”). This piece is contrasted by the second and third movements which he wrote over the next five years, namely the short pastoral dance (“Andante moderato”), and scherzo waltz (“In ruhig fliessender Bewegung”). In the fourth movement, the composer adds a vocal solo to the orchestra with the pious song “Urlicht,” or “Primal Light.” The extensive finale of “Doomsday,” (“In Tempo des Scherzo”) also serves as the core of the symphony that thematically connects all previous elements. Mahler adapted the choral “Resurrection” for his work, adding his own cathartic verses. The symphony ends with the words of the composer, “I will die to live!” (“Sterben werd’ ich, um zu leben!”), whereby the author exalts creative immortality.
Come and experience a colossal musical achievement – Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection!”
General sponsor of the Rijeka Symphony Orchestra
