Sixth Symphony Concert

Antonin Dvořák’s tone poem “The Noon Witch” opens the sixth symphony concert of the season under the baton of American conductor and musicologist Leon Botstein. Inspired by the Karel Jaromír Erben poem “Polednice”, the piece describes a mother’s desperate struggle to protect her child from the Noonday Witch, a metaphorical figure which she herself summoned as of means of discipline. Gustav Mahler’s cycle “Songs of a Wayfarer” are also based on a literary source, in this case a set of texts written by the composer himself. The set of four Lieder was written in the wake of Mahler’s unhappy love for soprano Johanna Richter. Mahler revealed his state of mind in a letter to a friend: “The  order  of  the  songs  is  meant  to  show  a  wayfaring  journeyman  who  has  had  a fateful experience, and who is now setting off into the world, travelling on alone”. It stands to reason that Mahler’s “fateful experience” was the soprano’s unrequited love. Baritone Benjamin Russell is the guest soloist in Mahler’s work. The final piece programmed for the evening is Josef Suk’s very rarely performed Asrael Symphony, named after the Old Testament angel of death and written in memory of the life and work of Antonin Dvořák, his father-in-law and teacher. While Suk was in the middle of the work, his wife Otilie (Dvořák’s daughter) died, and he decided to dedicate the last two movements of the five-movement work to her.