Friday, March 27, 1:30pm Saturday, March 28, 8pm | THE

Thursday, March 26, 8pm | THE VIRGINIA AND JAMES AISNER CONCERT
Friday, March 27, 1:30pm
Saturday, March 28, 8pm | THE GREGORY E. BULGER FOUNDATION CONCERT
Tuesday, March 31, 8pm | THE NOUBAR AND ANNA AFEYAN CONCERTANDRIS NELSONS CONDUCTING
“ASCENDING LIGHT,” FOR ORGAN AND ORCHESTRA
(WORLD PREMIERE; COMMISSIONED BY THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, ANDRIS
NELSONS, MUSIC DIRECTOR, WITH GENEROUS SUPPORT PROVIDED BY THE GOMIDAS ORGAN FUND, IN MEMORY
OF BERJ ZAMKOCHIAN AND COMMEMORATING THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE)
I. Vis Vitalis—
II. Lullaby of Tigranakert/Variations—Reverie—
Coda: Avarot lousaber (Ascending light)
OLIVIER LATRY, organ
GANDOLFI
{INTERMISSION}
MAHLER
SYMPHONY NO. 6
Allegro energico, ma non troppo
Scherzo (Wuchtig) [Weighty]
Andante moderato
Finale. Allegro moderato
FRIDAY AFTERNOON’S APPEARANCE BY OLIVIER LATRY IS SUPPORTED BY A GENEROUS GIFT FROM POLLY AND
DAN PIERCE.
SATURDAY EVENING’S PERFORMANCE OF MAHLER’S SYMPHONY NO. 6 IS SUPPORTED BY A GIFT FROM DR. AND
MRS. IRVING H. PLOTKIN.
TUESDAY EVENING’S PERFORMANCE OF MAHLER’S SYMPHONY NO. 6 IS SUPPORTED BY A GIFT FROM DR. NANCY
F. KOEHN.
BANK OF AMERICA AND EMC CORPORATION ARE PROUD TO SPONSOR THE BSO’S 2014-2015 SEASON.
The evening concerts will end about 10:20, the afternoon concert about 3:50.
Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe performs on a Stradivarius violin, known as the “Lafont,” generously donated
to the Boston Symphony Orchestra by the O’Block Family.
Steinway and Sons Pianos, selected exclusively for Symphony Hall.
Special thanks to The Fairmont Copley Plaza and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, and Commonwealth Worldwide
Chauffeured Transportation.
The program books for the Friday series are given in loving memory of Mrs. Hugh Bancroft by her daughters,
the late Mrs. A. Werk Cook and the late Mrs. William C. Cox.
Broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are heard on 99.5 WCRB.
In consideration of the performers and those around you, please turn off all electronic devices during the
concert, including tablets, cellular phones, pagers, watch alarms, and messaging devices of any kind. Thank
you for your cooperation.
Please note that taking pictures of the orchestra—whether photographs or videos—is prohibited during
concerts.
The Program in Brief...
BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons leads the second world premiere of the season, Michael Gandolfi’s
Ascending Light for organ and orchestra, the first work for organ solo and orchestra commissioned by the
BSO. Gandolfi is a Boston-based composer and an alumnus and faculty member of both the New England
Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center. Ascending Light was commissioned to honor the ArmenianAmerican organist Berj Zamkochian, and to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
Zamkochian was a frequent performer with the BSO and Boston Pops beginning in the 1950s. Gandolfi has
previously written pieces for the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Chamber
Players, and the BSO itself, which premiered his Night Train to Perugia, a Tanglewood 75th-anniversary
commission, in 2012.
Michael Gandolfi celebrates Armenia and its culture in the two-movement Ascending Light, the title of which
is a translation of “Aravot lousaber,” the name of the Armenian hymn tune heard in the work’s coda. The first
movement, “Vis Vitalis,” or “life force,” represents for the composer the resolute vitality of Armenia’s people
and culture. The second movement begins with a solo organ transcription of an Armenian “Lullaby of
Tigranakert,” an improvisatory melody on which Gandolfi composed four variations—the first three
introspective, the fourth, much larger one, an energetic scherzo. This is followed by a quiet “Reverie,” which
leads to the “Aravot lousaber” coda.
Following three symphonies involving voice, Mahler’s Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh symphonies are a purely
instrumental trilogy linked by a renewed interest in counterpoint and a new and highly refined treatment of the
orchestra. Mahler wrote the Sixth over the course of the two summers 1903 and 1904, during one of the most
idyllic periods of his life: he was a leading conductor of his age; his Fifth Symphony had had a triumphant
premiere; he was happily married and had two young daughters. Yet the Sixth is arguably his darkest, most
emotionally fraught work, and the only one of his symphonies to end forcefully in the minor mode with no
hint of relief. It is in four movements, the first an intense, march-infused, twenty-four-minute span introducing
harmonic relationships that obtain throughout the piece. Of particular importance is a simple two-chord motif
moving from A major to A minor. Within the storm, though, Mahler gives a glimpse of idyllic Austrian
country life, cowbells heard clanking in the distance.
Mahler himself vacillated as to the published order of the two middle movements; each conductor must make
the decision anew. On one hand, the scherzo can be heard as a continuing development of the first
movement’s materials; on the other, the Andante moderato provides a welcome respite from the opening
movement’s intensity. The finale ranges widely in tempo and mood, recalling moments from earlier in the
piece, sometimes suggesting a turn toward reconciliation but ultimately crashing back to the depths. Mahler
originally composed three “hammer strokes” for critical moments of this movement; as his wife Alma
recounted, “It is the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him.” But the superstitious
composer omitted the third blow in the 1906 premiere.
Robert Kirzinger
In Defense of Mahler’s Music—
A Letter from Aaron Copland to the Editor of the New York Times
Reprinted from the Boston Symphony Orchestra program of October 16 and 17, 1931—the program book for
the United States premiere of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky—this letter
from Aaron Copland to the “New York Times,” dated April 2, 1925, reflects a period when Mahler’s music
was still basically unfamiliar, and even puzzling, to audiences and critics on this side of the Atlantic.
The first Mahler symphony to enter the BSO’s repertoire was No. 5, introduced here by Wilhelm Gericke in
February 1906. Karl Muck introduced the Second to BSO audiences in January 1918, and Pierre Monteux the
First in November 1923. The Ninth followed in 1931, the Fourth (under Richard Burgin) in 1942, the Seventh
(under Koussevitzky) in 1948, the Adagio from the unfinished Tenth in 1953 (Burgin again), the Third only in
1962 (again Burgin), the Sixth in 1964 (under Erich Leinsdorf), and the Eighth in 1972 (at Tanglewood under
Ozawa; not until 1980 did the BSO play the Eighth in Symphony Hall, again with Ozawa).
To the Editor of the New York Times:
The music critics of New York City are agreed upon at least one point—Gustav Mahler, as a composer, is
hopeless. Year in and year out, the performance of one of Mahler’s works is invariably accompanied by the
same disparaging reviews. Yet no critic has been able to explain just what it is that [the conductor Willem]
Mengelberg—and for that matter all Germany, Austria, and Holland—finds so admirable in Mahler’s music.
If I write in defense of Mahler it is not merely for the pleasure of contradicting the critics. As a matter of fact,
I also realize that Mahler has at times written music which is bombastic, longwinded, banal. What our critics
say regarding his music is, as a rule, quite justified, but it is what they leave unsaid that seems to me unfair.
If one discounts for the moment the banal themes, the old-fashioned romantico-philosophical conceptions so
dear to Mahler—if one looks at the music quâ music—then it is undeniable that Mahler is a composer of
today. The Second Symphony, which dates from 1894, is thirty years ahead of its time. From the standpoint of
orchestration, Mahler is head and shoulders above Strauss, whose orchestral methods have already dated so
perceptibly. Mahler orchestrates on big, simple lines, in which each note is of importance. He manages his
enormous number of instruments with extraordinary economy, there are no useless doublings, instrument is
pitted against instrument, group against group. So recent a score as Honegger’s “Pacific 231” is proof of
Mahler’s living influence.
The present-day renewed interest in polyphonic writing cannot fail to reflect glory on Mahler’s consummate
mastery of that delicate art. The contrapuntal weaving of voices in the Eighth Symphony—especially in the
first part—is one side of Mahler’s genius which I believe the critics have not sufficiently appreciated.
As for the banality of Mahler’s thematic material, I have found that generally no matter how ordinary the
melody may be, there is always somewhere, either in the beginning or end, one note, one harmony, one slight
change which gives the Mahler touch. (Every page he wrote has the individual quality that we demand from
every great composer—he was never more Mahler than when he was copying Mozart.) In any case, even when
his musical ideas prove barren, I am fascinated by what he does with them and how he clothes them.
That Mahler has on occasion been grandiloquent is undeniable, but I fail to find any bombast whatsoever in
“Das Lied von der Erde.” Most critics, I believe, would agree with that statement. Yet they are so prone to
discussing Mahler’s music in generalities that any one unfamiliar with that composition would be led to
suppose that it, too, was full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Mahler has possibly never written a perfect masterpiece; yet, in my opinion, such things as the first movement
of the Seventh Symphony, the scherzo of the Ninth, the last movement of the Fourth, and the entire “Das Lied
von der Erde” have in them the stuff of living music.
AARON COPLAND
New York, April 2, 1925
Michael Gandolfi
“Ascending Light,” for organ and orchestra (2015)
MICHAEL GANDOLFI was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, on July 5, 1956, and lives in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. He was offered the commission to compose a work for organ and orchestra for the Boston
Symphony Orchestra—the first work for organ and orchestra to be specifically commissioned by the BSO—in
summer 2009. Most of the active stage of composition took place in 2014, and the completed score was ready
by January 2015. The score is inscribed, “Com-missioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris
Nelsons, Music Director, with generous support provided by the Gomidas Organ Fund, in memory of Berj
Zamkochian and commemo-rating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.” The composer’s
dedication is “in loving memory of my father.” These are the world premiere performances.
IN ADDITION TO THE SOLO ORGAN, the score for “Ascending Light” calls for three flutes (third
doubling piccolo), three oboes (third doubling English horn), three clarinets (third doubling bass clarinet),
three bassoons (third doubling contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, two trombones and bass trombone,
tuba, percussion (three players: xylophone, glockenspiel, two sets of tubular bells, bass drum, large and
medium suspended cymbals, crash cymbals, tambourine, triangle, mark tree, ratchet), timpani, harp, and
strings. The duration of the piece is about twenty-eight minutes.
The impetus for this Boston Symphony Orchestra commission for Michael Gandolfi’s Ascending Light for
organ and orchestra came originally from the Gomidas Organ Fund in honor of its founder, the late ArmenianAmerican organist Berj Zamkochian (1929-2004), as well as to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the
Armenian genocide. Zamkochian, a longtime presence in the Boston music community, was also active
worldwide as a soloist and for many years a faculty member of the New England Conservatory, where
Michael Gandolfi is a member of the composition faculty. While still in his twenties, Zamkochian gained the
attention of BSO music director Charles Munch, who brought him to Symphony Hall as organ soloist in such
works as the Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 (his recording of that work with the BSO is considered a classic)
and the Poulenc Concerto for Organ, Timpani and Strings. He performed in Symphony Hall’s erstwhile
regular series of organ recitals and, following Munch’s departure, continued to appear with the BSO and
Boston Pops for many years. Zamkochian established the Gomidas Organ Fund to mark the centenary of the
great Armenian priest and composer Gomidas Vardapet (1869-1935).*
A teacher, composer, and musicologist, Gomidas remains the single most important figure in the more than
millennium-old tradition of Armenian music. His efforts to catalogue Armenian folk music as well as the
complex system of church modes helped focus the cultural identity of a people that had largely come under
Ottoman rule for centuries. In part because of this, he was one of the several hundred Armenian intellectuals
and artists arrested in Constantinople in April 1915, an event marking the beginning of what has come to be
known as the Armenian Genocide.† Michael Gandolfi celebrates the lively and enduring foundation of
modern Armenian culture represented by Gomidas and the other deported intellectuals in the majestic,
energetic music at the beginning and end of Ascending Light. He also quotes specific Armenian church and
folk music elsewhere in the piece.
Gandolfi’s embrace of these musical materials, so richly a part of Armenian culture, reflects a wide-ranging
intellectual and artistic curiosity that is also on display in the composer’s earlier commissions from the BSO.
The first of these, for the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, was The Garden of Cosmic Speculation
(2004), which was inspired by a vast Scottish garden, designed by Charles Jencks and based on various
subjects of exploration in modern science. (He later expanded this piece into an eleven-movement, seventyminute work, premiered in its complete form by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.) His Plain Song, Fantastic
Dances (2005), commissioned for, premiered, and recorded by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players,
incorporates Gregorian chant melody as a reference to St. Botolph, after whom the city of Boston is named.
His orchestral commission Night Train to Perugia (2012), commissioned for the 75th anniversary of
Tanglewood, is a short fantasia alluding tongue-in-cheek to an experiment done at the CERN Large Hadron
Collider suggesting (mistakenly) that neutrinos can move faster than the speed of light. Among other sciencebased works is his Q.E.D.: Engaging Richard Feynman, for the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus (2010), with
which, along with music director Robert Spano, he worked closely in recent years. Literature has figured
strikingly in his work, from Shakespeare to Pinocchio to Boris Vian, as has visual art, especially the
unexpected juxtapositions of the surrealists, the visual games of M.C. Escher, and the pattern dynamics of
American minimalists.
Gandolfi’s inquisitiveness has expanded naturally into collaborative projects. He has worked extensively with
the writer Dana Bonstrom, who has provided texts and narrative scenarios for a variety of works, including the
large-scale chorus-and-orchestra work Chesapeake: Summer of 1814, commemorating the 200th anniversary
of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and The Queen and the Conjurer, based on Tarot cards. The composer has
also collaborated with the videographer Ean White in several multimedia projects, including video
accompaniment for The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. He is offered commissions from all over the country,
and in addition to the BSO and the Atlanta Symphony has worked frequently with the Boston Modern
Orchestra Project (which has released two CDs of his music) and his hometown ensemble, the nearly 100year-old Melrose Symphony Orchestra, for which he has written several pieces.
As mentioned above, Michael Gandolfi teaches as the New England Conservatory, his own alma mater; he has
also taught at Harvard and Indiana universities and has been on the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center
since 1997. He was a Tanglewood Fellow in 1986, when he worked with Oliver Knussen and earned a
commission for his orchestral work Transfigurations. This summer he is one of the curators for Tanglewood’s
annual Festival of Contemporary Music, during which a new ensemble work, commissioned for the TMC’s
75th anniversary, receives its world premiere.
Michael Gandolfi’s Ascending Light for organ and orchestra takes its title from that of an Armenian hymn,
“Aravot lousaber,” upon which the last section of the piece is based. The work is in two movements: the first
is an energetic, highly patterned series of exchanges between the orchestra and the organ titled “Vis Vitalis.”
This translates as “vital force,” referring to the ancient philosophical idea of a non-physical substance that
animates life; here, the “life force” of Armenia is its people, and in particular the artists and intellectuals
deported or killed in Turkey in April 1915. The placement of two sets of tubular bells, flanking the timpani at
the rear of the stage, echoes the visual motif of the Symphony Hall organ pipes; trumpet-and-trombone pairs
on either side of the stage are a deliberate ceremonial gesture. The composer writes, “The passages of the first
movement allow the organ to show many of its myriad guises. It is alternately leader, follower, virtuoso
(replete with elaborate pedal-work), initiator of change, etc. At one moment, central in the first movement, the
organ introduces motivic figures in sequence that quickly find their way into the orchestra only to become
accompaniment for further elaboration by the organ, which elaboration is in turn added to the orchestra, etc.,
creating a complex web of accompaniment that rivals the organ’s next contribution.”
Various types of harmonic and metrical aural illusions heard throughout the piece are characteristic of
Gandolfi’s music. For example, metrically the winds’ rising arpeggiated figure near the start of the piece can
be heard as either groups of four notes (suggested by pitch) or groups of three (suggested by the insistent
quarter-note rhythm of timpani). The composer uses this ambiguity to foreshadow changes in metrical and
rhythmic perspective within the movement. Harmonies are based on triads (the basic chord of traditional tonal
music), but evolve in unexpected ways, abetted by the metrical sleight-of-hand, use of harmonic pedal points,
and the shift of material from foreground to accompaniment, like perspective fields in a Medieval landscape
painting.
The first movement’s grand finish is connected to the second via a pedal note in the organ. The melody here is
transcribed from recordings of a “Lullaby of Tigranakert,” which in its free, improvisatory flow contrasts with
the intricate interlocking patterns of the first movement. As in the first movement, though, Gandolfi takes
fragments of this primary tune to use in accompaniment patterns; a rising sixteenth-note figure, passed among
orchestral sections, is especially persistent. The second of the three shorter variations is an organ solo; the
longer fourth variation, “Grand variation: scherzo” is virtually a movement in itself. Upon its winding-down,
the Reverie, a piccolo solo over chorale harmonies, leads us to the final section, “Aravot lousaber,”
“Ascending light.” That hymn’s melody, first presented in simple chorale form, then combines with the music
of the first movement in a joyous, vital, uplifting coda.
Robert Kirzinger
ROBERT KIRZINGER, a composer and annotator, is Assistant Director of Program Publications of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra.
* -Gomidas, or Komitas, was the name given to the monk Soghomon Soghomonian upon his ordination in
1894; “Vardapet” and “Vardabed” are transliterations designating the title for a class of Armenian priest.
† -Following Gomidas’s arrest and a traumatic imprisonment in a deportation camp, his stature as an artist led
to his being released and ultimately sent to Paris, where he spent the last fifteen years of his life in fragile
mental and physical health. He died in October 1935, and his remains were reinterred in Yerevan the
following year.
Michael Gandolfi on “Ascending Light”
I was first presented with this commission for a work for organ and orchestra in the summer of 2009, by
Anthony Fogg, Artistic Administrator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He made it clear that it was the
wish of the members of the Gomidas Organ Fund that I have complete artistic freedom in writing the piece:
the work need not be conceived as a requiem for those who perished in the Armenian Genocide. However, it
was immediately clear to me that I would not be able to compose this work in ignorance of this terribly tragic
event.
I found an appealing and well-known Armenian lullaby, known as the lullaby of Tigranakert (Tigranakert was
the ancient capital of Armenia). My research led to many recorded examples. I transcribed several, realizing
that this would be a prominent feature of the piece at some point. After doing this I became interested in
researching sacred Armenian music and found a choral work titled “Aravot Lousaber,”’ which translates as
“Ascending Light.” The plaintive melody dates back several centuries, but a simple and elegant four-part
harmonization was by the Armenian priest, musicologist, and composer known as Vartapet Komitas. (I
learned only after completing the piece that Komitas is Gomidas, after whom the Gomidas Organ Fund is
named—a fortuitous and remarkable synchronicity.) I then had two Armenian musical references that
provided a superb balance: one of earthiness, one of heavenliness.
In fall 2014, after a long session of reading about the great number of intellectuals murdered at the outset of
the Armenian Genocide, I found myself viewing portraits of a number of these victims, apparently taken in the
prime of their lives. Suddenly a very powerful, almost defiant music emerged in my inner ear. This music was
rich and full of life. It was a courageous music. The full form of the piece was suddenly made clear. The first
movement would be a celebration of the vitality of life or “life force.” The second would move from the
earthly to the heavenly. The finale would merge the transformation of the second movement with the life-force
music of the first. I felt that the generally positive ethos of the piece would align with the vital and developing
Armenian culture that has prevailed in spite of the horrors of 1915.
Once all of this was in place, the piece was written rather quickly. I was excited to write a work for the newly
renovated organ at Boston’s Symphony Hall. I was also greatly aided by hearing Olivier Latry in recital in
Montreal at the very early stages of writing. We met for several hours after his recital and he played through
my transcription of the “Lullaby of Tigranakert.” He also generously revealed many features of organ-writing
that proved most useful in the following weeks. He is a remarkable musician, with a great stage presence. In
addition to Olivier, I sought counsel in writing for organ from Kathryn Salfelder, a fine DMA composition
student of mine and an accomplished organist, as well as from organist and New England Conservatory
faculty Tom Handel. I was also fortunate to have the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble, led by my
friend and colleague Charles Peltz, read through the opening of the piece.
Michael Gandolfi
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 6
GUSTAV MAHLER was born in Kalischt (Kaliˇstˇe) near the Moravian border of Bohemia on July 7, 1860,
and died in Vienna on May 18, 1911. He composed the Sixth Symphony during the summers of 1903 and
1904, completing the orchestration on May 1, 1905. He led a reading rehearsal with the Vienna Philharmonic
in March 1906 and conducted the first public performance on May 27, 1906, in Essen (he later went on to
revise the work in various ways).
MAHLER’S SYMPHONY NO. 6 IS SCORED for four flutes and piccolo (third and fourth flutes also
doubling piccolo), four oboes (third and fourth doubling English horn), three clarinets with high clarinet (D
and E-flat) and bass clarinet, four bassoons and contrabassoon, eight horns, six trumpets, three tenor
trombones and bass trombone, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum (doubled), cymbals, triangle, rattle, tamtam, glockenspiel, cowbells, low-pitched bells, birch brush, hammer, xylophone, two harps, celesta (doubled if
possible), and strings.
In 1921, Paul Bekker, in the earliest really substantial study of Mahler’s work, Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien,
began the chapter on the Sixth Symphony by noting that at that time the trilogy of purely instrumental
symphonies, Nos. 5, 6, and 7, were the works least frequently performed, and that, of these, the Sixth was the
rarest of all. For many years the Sixth was the only Mahler symphony never to have been given in America.
(Serge Koussevitzky intended to remedy that defect in 1933 but apparently was unable to make arrangements
with the Leipzig publisher for the parts. It remained for Dimitri Mitropoulos to introduce the symphony to
America in 1947, and by then the problems were different: the publisher’s original parts had been destroyed in
wartime bombings, so new parts had to be copied from the score.) Until the 1960s, when, true to the
composer’s own prediction, his time finally came, these “middle” symphonies were still rarely heard. The ice
was broken mostly by the Adagietto movement of the Fifth Symphony, which almost attained a life of its own,
but gradually all of them entered the repertory of the major orchestras and they have now been recorded many
times over. In recent decades, the Sixth and Seventh symphonies (the Seventh for a long while being regarded
as the most problematic stepchild of Mahler’s newfound popularity) have come to be as firmly established as
the Fifth.
Possibly part of the reason for the neglect of the middle symphonies was that audiences found it easier to
follow Mahler’s highly original approach to symphonic writing when provided with an explicit program (such
as those he produced for the First and Third symphonies, though he later suppressed them) or with a text (as in
the Sec-ond, Third, Fourth, and Eighth). His dazzlingly complex and ingenious instrumental symphonies
simply overwhelmed the senses, especially before the development of the long-playing record, when one had
to catch them at infrequent performances. No composer has benefited so much from the development of the
recording as Mahler, simply because listeners were then able to live with his demanding works until their
secrets could be revealed. We might have expected that the Sixth would be easier to comprehend than the
others, if only because it is one of Mahler’s rare productions to follow the traditional four-movement
symphonic form, but the som-ber emotional quality of the score seems to have acted against it. Although
Mahler avoid-ed revealing any kind of program for the three symphonies, he did allow the Sixth to be
performed with the epithet Tragic; but later he removed even that much of a hint. The mood is, in any event,
self-evident, since it is the only Mahler symphony to end unrelievedly in the minor. All the others, even when
they start in the minor, proceed to blazing triumph or, at least, to gentle, poignant resignation, in the major
mode. But though the fatalism of the ending—for Mahler was indeed a fatalist—may depress listeners who
look instead for trans-figur-ation, writers on Mahler increasingly rank the Sixth, taken as a whole, as his
great-est symphonic achieve-ment. The composer him-self found the work almost too moving to bear and
predicted—correctly, as it turn-ed out—that the Sixth would languish in obscur-ity until the world knew his
first five symphonies.
We might very well wonder why Mahler wrote a “tragic” symphony in 1903 and 1904. As is usually the case
with such queries, the answer is by no means simple; indeed, per-haps no explanation is possible. On the face
of it, tragedy should have been the thing farthest from Mahler’s mind. He had married Alma Schindler, around
whom his life henceforth revolved, on March 9, 1902, and their first daughter, Maria, was born in Novem-ber.
The year was one of increasing professional acclaim for Mahler the composer, with the enormously successful
premiere of the Third Symphony in Krefeld in May. As a conductor he had already reached a pinnacle, having
served as music director of the Vien-na Opera since 1897. And he had begun composing with renewed vigor
after his wedding, spending his summer vacations from the opera house engaged in feverish creative activity.*
The Fifth Symphony, composed during the first summer after his wed-ding, is aptly characterized by Michael
Kennedy as Mahler’s Eroica, a symphonic conquest. But the Sixth, composition of which occupied the next
two summers, is quite a different matter. The symphony is filled with the heavy tread of marching, with dotted
rhythms, and, above all, with a motto idea that consists simply of an A major triad that suddenly turns to
minor. This major-to-minor motto functions on the smallest scale as a metaphor for the mood of the entire
work, which several times in the last movement seems about to culminate in the major mode but finally
shrinks from so positive a conclusion and ends tragically—but with defiance—in A minor.
We have a tendency, ex post facto, to think of Mahler as a death-obsessed neurotic, virtually incapable of
living in the real world but rather pouring out his anguish, longing, and intimations of mortality in his work.
To a considerable extent these views de-rive from Alma’s memoirs, which are an indispensable source but
must be used with extreme caution, since she had every reason to build up her own role in “sustaining” the
composer through his tribulations. (A great deal of the Mahler legend and of our understanding of his music
ultimately goes back to otherwise unsupported statements in Alma’s memoirs.) Until his heart lesion was
discovered in 1907 Mahler maintained a vigorous summer regimen of swimming, hiking, and mountain
climbing, activities put in the service of generating and working out his musical ideas. Even Alma recalls that
the two summers during which he composed the Sixth were emotionally untroubled. Of 1903, she said:
Summer had come, and with it we resumed our life at Maiernigg and its un-varying and peaceful routine.
Mahler soon began working. This time it was the first sketches for the Sixth Symphony. He played a lot
with our child, carrying her about and holding her up to dance and sing. So young and unencumbered he
was in those days.**
Of 1904, the summer in which Mahler finished the symphony, Alma noted only that it was “beautiful, serene,
and happy.” (Their second daughter had been born that June.) Only one thing upset her—or so she
remembered years later: in both summers Mahler set to music some poems by Friedrich Rückert dealing with
the death of children.
I found this incomprehensible. I can understand setting such frightful words to music if one had no children,
or had lost those one had. Moreover, Friedrich Rückert did not write these harrowing elegies solely out of
his imagination: they were dictated by the cruellest loss of his whole life. What I cannot understand is
bewailing the deaths of children, who were in the best of health and spirits, hardly an hour after having
kissed and fondled them. I exclaimed at the time: “For heaven’s sake, don’t tempt Providence!”†
The result, of course, was Mahler’s great song cycle Kindertotenlieder (“Songs on the Death of Children”),
which was thus being conceived and composed at the same time as the Sixth Symphony.
Alma claimed similar foreboding upon hearing the completed symphony. (Despite the lengthy gestation
period, encompassing two summers, she did not hear the work in prog-ress; Mahler composed in a distant,
private little hut in the wood and refused to play his music to anyone before it was finished: “An artist could
no more show unfinished work than a mother her child in the womb.”) On the day that Mahler finally
announced the work to be finished, Alma rushed to get everything done in the house, then walked with him
arm in arm to the little hut, where he played it through for her.
Not one of his works came so directly from his inmost heart as this. We both wept that day. The music and
what it foretold touched us so deeply. The Sixth is the most completely personal of his works, and a
prophetic one also. In the Kinder-totenlieder, as also in the Sixth, he anticipated his own life in music. On
him too fell three blows of fate, and the last felled him. But at the time he was serene; he was conscious of
the greatness of his work. He was a tree in full leaf and flower.
We may well believe that the two were overcome by the deep personal expressiveness of this music, but the
reference to “what it foretold” is surely wisdom after the fact. The last movement contained, at three decisive
points, a single powerful stroke with a hammer, the instrument being introduced into the score of the
symphony solely for these three strokes. According to Alma, the composer described the movement, with its
hammer strokes, as “the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled.”
With the hindsight of one writing her memoirs, Alma saw three “hammer strokes” that struck Mahler himself
in the year 1907 (though her de-scription of the events, which has been followed by most writers, telescopes
the time span and gives the impression that the blows came directly one after the other): his resignation from
the Vienna Opera in the face of mounting opposition to his reforms (and the strong thread of anti-Semitism in
the city’s cultural life), the sudden and devastating death of his elder daughter Maria, at age four-and-a-half,
from scarlet fever and diphtheria, and the discovery of his own serious heart condition—the blow that “felled
him.” Still, though Alma and Mahler may not have reacted with foreboding when she first heard the music, the
composer after 1907 came to be superstitiously afraid of the three hammer strokes and eventually removed the
last, “mortal” blow. As the score is printed in the critical edition of Mahler’s works, there are only two such
strokes, though some conductors choose to reinstate the missing one. (Andris Nelsons does not.)
The hammer blows presented a problem at the first performance. During the rehear-sals it was discovered that
they could not be heard to proper effect, and the performers tried striking the hammer against various objects
(including a specially constructed drum of Mahler’s own invention) to improve audibility, but none of them
seems to have been entirely satisfactory. The Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg wrote to the composer
with a suggested solution, for which Mahler thanked him in a letter promising to try it when he conducted the
symphony in Amsterdam and planning perhaps to add a note to the score by way of explanation.
Unfortunately Mahler never did conduct the Sixth in Amsterdam, Mengelberg’s letter to him is lost (so we do
not know what the sug-gestion was), and the composer never changed the explanation in the score, which
states simply that the hammer blow should be a “short, strong, but dully reverberating stroke of a non-metallic
character (like an axe-stroke).” Thus the problem of creating the ap-propriate sound is left, in each case, to the
performers.
Alma’s memoirs recall the emotions aroused in the composer as he prepared the or-chestra for the first public
performance of the Sixth, to be held at a festival of the United Ger-man Music Society in Essen. She also
recalled the utter insensitivity of the other important composer there, Richard Strauss:
We came to the last rehearsals, to the dress rehearsal—to the last movement with its three great blows of
fate. When it was over, Mahler walked up and down in the artists’ room, sobbing, wringing his hands,
unable to control himself. Fried, Gabrilovitch, Buths, and I stood transfixed, not daring to look at one
another. Suddenly Strauss came noisily in, noticing nothing. “Mahler, I say, you’ve got to conduct some
funeral overture or other tomorrow before the Sixth—their mayor has died on them. So vulgar, that sort of
thing—But what’s the matter? What’s up with you? But—” and out he went as noisily as he had come in,
quite unmoved, leaving us petrified. ††
Apparently one result of Mahler’s highly wrought-up reaction to the dress rehearsal was that he did not
conduct the premiere itself well, fearing to underline the significance of the last movement. The response of
the critics was not especially favorable, with complaints in general that Mahler’s undeniable brilliance of
orchestral technique had outstripped the content of his work. But two young men with highly educated
musi-cal ears were entranced and excited, and they remained devotees of Mahler’s music. Their names were
Anton Webern and Alban Berg.
One reason for their enthusiasm is that here Mahler achieves his most successful balance between the claims
of dramatic self-expression, which is always at the core of his music, and architectural formality. It is, in fact,
one of the most striking things about the Sixth that it is at once deeply personal and classically formal. Three
of the four move-ments are in the tonic key of A minor, the only exception being the slow movement (a
symphonic tradition going all the way back to Haydn, though rarely maintained at the end of the nineteenth
century). The sinister opening bars introduce the constantly re-curring motives of the steady tramping in the
bass and a dotted rhythm. The formal ex-position (which is repeated, as in earlier classical symphonies) adds
to these motives a melody opening with a downward octave leap and more marching, leading to the first
explicit statement of the “motto” mentioned earlier.
Orchestral timbre plays as important a part as the change from major to minor in coloring this idea: three
trumpets attack the A major chord fortissimo but die away to pianissimo as it turns to A minor; three oboes,
entering on the same chord, grow from pianissimo to fortissimo, so that the heroic brassy sound of the major
chord gradually shifts to the expressive nasality of the double reed. A chorale-like theme in the woodwinds,
punctuated by light pizzicato strings, leads to F major and the passionate second theme (which, again
according to Alma, was the composer’s attempt to depict her), soaring in the violins and upper woodwinds.
After a full repeat of the exposition, the development gets underway with rich contra-puntal interchanges
between the various thematic ideas. Among the most poetic passages is the surprising appearance of cowbells
playing against soft chords in the celesta and high, triple-piano tremolo chords in the violins. Mahler, the
ardent alpinist, had no doubt heard the sound of cowbells many times echoing up to him through the clear
mountain air; he considered them “the last earthly sounds heard from the valley far below by the departing
spirit on the mountain top.” But in the score he adds a careful footnote that “the cowbells must be handled
very discreetly—in realistic imitation of a grazing herd, high and low-pitched bells resounding from the
distance, now all together, now individually. It is, however, expressly noted, that this technical remark is not
in-tended to provide a programmatic explanation.” The first movement ends with the “Alma” theme in a
temporarily consoling A major.
The middle two movements raise a special question. Mahler originally placed them in the order ScherzoAndante, which is the order found in the manuscript and used in the first published score. But then, perhaps
because he was persuaded that the thematic material of the scherzo was too similar to that of the first
movement, he reversed the order of the two movements to Andante-Scherzo, the sequence used for all of the
performances Mahler himself conducted and for subsequent printings of the score during his lifetime. But he
was not permanently convinced, changing his mind on this point, even during rehearsals. Though the editor of
the 1963 critical edition of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, as well as the editors of the 1998 reprint, opted for
Mahler’s original conception of Scherzo-Andante, the most recent editor reversed the decision in 2003, saying
(on an insert to the score) that the order should be Andante-Scherzo. Since arguments can be made for either
sequence (Scherzo-Andante or Andante-Scherzo), the controversy has become more heated in recent years,
and it remains for conductors to choose between the two. In these performances, Andris Nelsons will conduct
the two middle movements in the order Scherzo-Andante.
The scherzo opens with an explicit reminiscence of the tramping bass of the opening movement, and follows it
with recollections of other material, now occasionally in a slightly parodistic mode (especially the sarcastic
trills of the woodwinds). The Trio, marked “Altväterisch” (“in an old-fashioned style”), features the oboe in a
charming pas-sage written in irregular rhythms. According to Alma’s memoirs, this section “repre-sented the
arhythmic games of the two little children, tottering in zigzags over the sand.” Here again she found the
ending to be ominous and foreboding, dying away enigmatically, as it does, into A minor and silence.
The Andante, in E-flat major, provides the one real passage of consolation in the sym-phony (significantly,
this occurs in the key that is farthest away from A minor), though the melodic material is akin to that of one of
the Kindertotenlieder. Whether this lyrical movement is placed second or third, Mahler here provides
wonderful contrast to what precedes and follows it.
The finale begins in C minor, the relative minor of the Andante’s E-flat major—one of Mahler’s favorite
expressive tonal relationships. A soaring violin theme, beginning with a rising octave, mirrors the falling
octave of the first-movement theme. In this finale, Mahler establishes, on an imposing scale, a contrapuntal
texture bringing together elements from throughout the symphony, especially the first movement. A
development section builds toward a massive climax in D major, but just at the point of arrival the first
hammer blow breaks off the cadence and the major mode shifts suddenly to minor for a new and still more
urgent development. Building to a passage of pure, almost Palestrinian counterpoint in A, the climactic
cadence to D is once again interrupted by a hammer stroke and a deceptive cadence onto B-flat. Anoth-er
return to the introduction builds a climax in A major, which bids fair to hold to the triumphant conclusion of
the symphony; this is the point where the third and final ham-mer stroke is called for. Even if it is omitted
from a performance, as it is from the critical edition (which Andris Nelsons follows in this regard), the point is
marked by the thunderous return of the marching timpani figure from the opening movement, following which
the only response is a complete collapse, as the brass and woodwinds sound once more the A minor triad—the
conclusion of the motto figure—while the heavy timpani march dies away in sullen silence to a soft pizzicato
A in the strings.
Steven Ledbetter
STEVEN LEDBETTER was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.
of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 was given by Dimitri Mitropoulos with the
New York Philharmonic on December 11, 1947.
THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA performances of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony were given by Erich
Leinsdorf in November 1964, Leinsdorf leading further performances that same season in Boston,
Washington, D.C., New Brunswick, and New York, as well as recording the symphony for RCA. Since then,
BSO performances have also been given by William Steinberg (October 1971, in Boston, Washington, and
New York), James Levine (on his first Tanglewood concert with the orchestra, on July 30, 1972, followed by a
single Brooklyn performance in February 1973); Seiji Ozawa (in April 1981; in January/February 1992, at
which time it was recorded live for Philips and also performed at Carnegie Hall; and in March 1998, followed
by European tour performances that same month in London, Paris, Vienna, Munich, and Athens), Bernard
Haitink, and James Levine again (the most recent subscription performances, in October 2008, from which a
live download release on BSO Classics was derived; and the most recent Tanglewood performance, on July
17, 2009—the BSO’s only other performance there since Levine’s in 1972).
* -We apparently owe at least part of Mahler’s newfound prolificacy to the influence of Alma and the joys of
conjugal bliss and stable family life. During the twenty years before his wedding, Mahler wrote four
symphonies (and part of a fifth), a cantata, and some songs; in just five years after, he completed the Fifth,
then went on to write the monumental Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth symphonies as well.
** -Mahler built a summer house at Maiernigg on the shores of Lake Wörth, in Carinthia, where Brahms
before him had summered when he wrote his Second Symphony, Violin Concerto, and G major violin sonata.
Later, Alban Berg was happy to be writing his own Violin Concerto on the shores of the same lake.
† -Mahler’s interest in Rückert’s poems was anything but ghoulish and only in retrospect can be seen as
“tempting Providence.” He was one of fourteen children, of whom only six survived to adulthood, so there
was ample experience in his own childhood to develop an empathy toward the poems. In any case, his
THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE
settings, among the most restrained and subtle of all his songs, entirely avoid the exploitation or bathos that
are dangers in attempting to deal with such a topic.
††-Alma had an intense dislike for Strauss and what she regarded as his bourgeois vulgarity, and she had no
aversion to showing it. Strauss’s absorption with his royalties and percentages was not conversational matter
congenial to the Mahlers.
To Read and Hear More...
The article on Michael Gandolfi in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001 edition, is by
Steven Ledbetter. The best, most up-to-date source of information on the composer and his works is his own
website, michaelgandolfi.com. This includes a biography, works list, and sound clips from some of his pieces.
The Boston Symphony Chamber Players recorded Plain Song, Fantastic Dances for an all-American disc on
the BSO Classics label (available at bso.org, the Symphony Shop, iTunes, and Amazon.com). The Boston
Modern Orchestra Project recorded two full CDs of Gandolfi’s music (both on the BMOP/sound label). “From
the Institutes of Groove” (2013) includes the titular concerto for bass trombone as well as concertos for
bassoon (with the BSO’s Richard Svoboda) and for saxophone. “Y2K Compliant” (2008) includes the title
piece as well as Points of Departure and Themes from a Midsummer Night. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
and Robert Spano recorded The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (Telarc) and the composer’s Q.E.D.: Engaging
Richard Feynman (ASO Media). Points of Departure was also recorded by the conductor-less Orpheus
Chamber Orchestra in the early 1990s (Deutsche Grammophon). Various other works can be found in the
“discography” section of the composer’s website.
Robert Kirzinger
Deryck Cooke’s Gustav Mahler: An Introduction to his Music is a first-rate brief guide to the composer’s
works (Cambridge University paperback). Other good starting points include Jonathan Carr’s Mahler
(Overlook Press), Peter Franklin’s The life of Mahler in the series “Musical lives” (Cambridge paperback),
and Michael Kennedy’s Mahler in the “Master Musicians” series (Oxford paperback). There are two big,
multi-volume biographies of the composer, one by Henry-Louis de La Grange (Oxford), the other by Donald
Mitchell (University of California). Useful essay collections devoted to Mahler’s life, works, and milieu
include The Mahler Companion, edited by Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (Oxford), Mahler and his
World, edited by Karen Painter (Princeton University paperback), and The Cambridge Companion to Mahler,
edited by Jeffrey Barham (Cambridge paperback). A Guide to the Symphony, edited by Robert Layton,
includes a chapter on Mahler by Stephen Johnson (Oxford paperback). Mahler enthusiast and conductor
Gilbert Kaplan has seen to the publication of The Mahler Album with the aim of bringing together every
known photograph of the composer (The Kaplan Foundation with Thames and Hudson). Also published by
The Kaplan Foundation are Mahler’s Concerts by Knud Martner, which offers a detailed history of Mahler on
the podium, including music performed, soloists, concert halls, etc., for each of more than 300 concerts (copublished with Overlook Press), and Mahler Discography, edited by Péter Fülöp, which remains valuable to
anyone interested in Mahler recordings, despite its 1995 publication date. Michael Steinberg’s program notes
on Mahler’s symphonies 1 through 10 are in his compilation volume The Symphony–A Listener’s Guide
(Oxford paperback). Alma Mahler’s autobiography And the Bridge is Love (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) and
her Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters (University of Washington paperback) provide important if
necessarily subjective source materials. Knud Martner’s Gustav Mahler: Selected Letters offers a useful
volume of correspondence, including all of the letters published in Alma’s earlier collection (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux). Though now nearly forty years old, Kurt Blaukopf’s extensively illustrated Mahler: A
Documentary Study remains well worth seeking from second-hand sources (Oxford University Press).
The Boston Symphony Orchestra has issued a download recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 with James
Levine conducting, derived from his Symphony Hall performances of October 2008 (BSO Classics, available
at bso.org, from iTunes, and from Amazon.com. There are also two earlier Boston Symphony recordings:
from 1965 with Erich Leinsdorf conducting (RCA) and live from 1992 with Seiji Ozawa conducting (Philips).
Other recordings of the Mahler Sixth, listed alphabetically by conductor, include Claudio Abbado’s with the
Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon), Leonard Bernstein’s with the New York Philharmonic (Sony),
Pierre Boulez’s with the Vienna Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon); Bernard Haitink’s with the
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam (Philips) and, more recently, live with the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra (CSO Resound); Georg Solti’s with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Decca), George Szell’s with
the Cleveland Orchestra (Sony), Klaus Tennstedt’s live with the London Philharmonic (LPO), Michael Tilson
Thomas’s live with the San Francisco Symphony (on that orchestra’s own label), and Benjamin Zander’s with
the Philharmonia Orchestra (Telarc).
Marc Mandel
Andris Nelsons
Andris Nelsons begins his tenure as the BSO’s Ray and Maria Stata Music Director with the 2014-15 season,
during which he leads the orchestra in ten programs at Symphony Hall, repeating three of them at New York’s
Carnegie Hall in April. Mr. Nelsons made his Boston Symphony debut in March 2011, conducting Mahler’s
Symphony No. 9 at Carnegie Hall. He made his Tanglewood debut in July 2012, leading both the BSO and the
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra as part of Tanglewood’s 75th Anniversary Gala (a concert subsequently
issued on DVD and Blu-ray, and televised nationwide on PBS), following that the next day with a BSO
program of Stravinsky and Brahms. His Sym-phony Hall and BSO subscription series debut followed in
January 2013, and at Tanglewood this past summer he led three concerts with the BSO, as well as a special
Tanglewood Gala featuring both the BSO and the TMC Orchestra. His appointment as the BSO’s music
director cements his reputation as one of the most renowned conductors on the international scene today, a
distinguished name on both the opera and concert podiums. He made his first appearances as the BSO’s music
director designate in October 2013 with a subscription program of Wagner, Mozart, and Brahms, and returned
to Symphony Hall in March 2014 for a concert performance of Strauss’s Salome. He is the fifteenth music
director in the history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Maestro Nelsons has been critically acclaimed as music director of the City of Birming-ham Symphony
Orchestra since assuming that post in 2008; he remains at the helm of that orchestra until summer 2015. With
the CBSO he undertakes major tours worldwide, including regular appearances at such summer festivals as the
Lucerne Festival, BBC Proms, and Berlin Festival. Together they have toured the major European concert
halls, including Vienna’s Musikverein, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Gasteig in Munich, and
Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Música. Mr. Nelsons made his debut in Japan on tour with the Vienna
Philharmonic and returned to tour Japan and the Far East with the CBSO in November 2013. Over the next
few seasons he will continue collaborations with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, the Bavarian Radio
Symphony Orchestra, and the Philharmonia Orchestra. He is a regular guest at the Royal Opera House–Covent
Garden, the Vienna State Opera, and New York’s Metro-politan Opera. In summer 2014 he returned to the
Bayreuth Festival to conduct Lohengrin, in a production directed by Hans Neuenfels, which Mr. Nelsons
premiered at Bayreuth in 2010. Andris Nelsons and the CBSO continue their recording collaboration with
Orfeo Inter-national as they work toward releasing all of Tchaikovsky’s orchestral works and a majority of
works by Richard Strauss, including a particularly acclaimed account of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. Most of
Mr. Nelsons’ recordings have been recognized with the Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten-kritik. In October
2011 he received the prestigious ECHO Klassik of the German Phono Academy in the category “Conductor of
the Year” for his CBSO recording of Stravinsky’s Firebird and Symphony of Psalms. For audiovisual
recordings, he has an exclusive agreement with Unitel GmbH, the most recent release being a Dvořák disc
entitled “From the New World” with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, released on DVD and Blu-ray
in June 2013. He is also the subject of a recent DVD from Orfeo, a documentary film entitled “Andris
Nelsons: Genius on Fire.”
Born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, Andris Nelsons began his career as a trumpeter in the Latvian
National Opera Orchestra before studying conducting. He was principal conductor of Nordwestdeutsche
Philharmonie in Herford, Germany, from 2006 to 2009 and music director of Latvian National Opera from
2003 to 2007.
Guest Artist
Olivier Latry
French organist Olivier Latry is one of the most distinguished concert organists in the world today. One of
three titular organists at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, he is also professor of organ at the Paris
Conservatory of Music and organist emeritus with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He maintains a full
schedule of concert performances, having performed in more than fifty countries on five continents. Mr. Latry
was born in 1962 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, where he began his musical studies. He later studied organ
with Gaston Litaize at the Academy of Music at St. Maur-des-Fossés. He was titular organist of Meaux
Cathedral from 1981 until 1985, and at age twenty-three won a competition to become one of the three titular
organists of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. In 1990 he succeeded Gaston Litaize as organ professor at
the Academy of Music at St. Maur-des-Fossés, and in 1995 he was appointed professor of organ at the Paris
Conservatory, where he continues to teach today. Not wishing to specialize in a particular repertoire, Olivier
Latry prefers to explore all styles of organ music, as well as the art of improvisation. In 2000, to celebrate
Olivier Messiaen as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, Mr. Latry performed three complete
cycles (six recitals each) of Messiaen’s organ music in Paris, New York, and London. He has also inaugurated
many significant concert hall organs around the world, including Verizon Hall in Philadelphia, the Palace of
the Arts in Budapest, and the Musikverein in Vienna. In 2014 he performed the inaugural concerts at La
Maison Symphonique in Montreal and in the inaugural concert series at London’s Royal Festival Hall. In
addition to concerts and teaching, Mr. Latry has made many recordings on France’s BNL label, featuring
music of Bach, Widor’s organ symphonies 5 and 6, Vierné’s organ symphonies 2 and 3, and the complete
organ works of Duruflé. With Deutsche Grammophon he has recorded “Midnight at Notre-Dame”
(transcriptions for the organ), organ works of César Franck, and the complete organ works of Messiaen. He
has also recorded Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ and Barber’s Toccata Festiva with the Philadelphia
Orchestra, and Jongen’s Symphonie Concertante with the Liège Orchestra. His most recent recording on the
Naïve label is entitled “Trois Siècles d’Orgue Notre-Dame de Paris” and features music composed by past and
current organists of Notre-Dame Cathedral. In recognition of his distinguished work in the field of organ
performance and teaching, Mr. Latry has received many prestigious awards and honorary degrees, including
the Prix de la Fondation Cino et Simone Del Duca (Institut de France–Académie des Beaux-Arts) in 2000, as
well as honorary fellowships from the North and Midlands School of Music (UK) in 2006, and from the Royal
College of Organists (UK) in 2007. He was named “International Performer of the Year” by the New York
City chapter of the American Guild of Organists in April 2009 and in 2010 received an honorary doctorate
from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Olivier Latry made his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut, his
only previous appearance with the BSO, in March 2013, as soloist in Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony with
Christoph Eschenbach conducting.