TMSO Special（3/16）

This concert is over. Date: Thu. 16. March 2023 19:00 (18:00)

Venue: Suntory Hall

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Artists

Kazushi ONO, Conductor
Eri NAKAMURA, Soprano
Mihoko FUJIMURA, Mezzo-Soprano
New National Theatre Chorus, Chorus

Profile

Kazushi ONO (Music Director)

Kazushi Ono is the definitive musical citizen of the world, having been born in Tokyo, studied in Munich and forged his early career in Zagreb, Karlsruhe and Tokyo. This variety of influences has shaped an inquiring and profound musical intellect and an ability to communicate meaning across languages and cultures, leading to longstanding relationships around the world.
Ono trained in Europe under Wolfgang Sawallisch and came to public attention winning first prize in the 1987 Toscanini Competition. Since his first appointment at Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1992 he has held continuous positions, including at Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, Karlsruhe Opera, La Monnaie, Opéra National de Lyon, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, and currently, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, New National Theatre Tokyo and Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra.
A favourite of orchestral players, he has lasting friendships with orchestras around the world and regularly guest conducts groups such as London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
His passion and curiosity for repertoire takes him in different directions – to the standard classics but also to new music. He often commissions works and has collaborated several times with Mark-Anthony Turnage, including on Silent Cities, Hibiki (which won a Royal Philharmonic Society award) and Time Flies, which was originally commissioned for the 2020 Tokyo Olympiad. Recent commissions at NNTT include Asters by Akira Nishimura and Dai Fujikura’s A Dream of Armageddon. His programming there also includes Baroque, 20th-century and bel canto masterpieces.
In Europe he conducted the world premieres of Toshio Hosokawa’s Hanjyo in Aix-en-Provence, Arnulf Hermann’s Der Mieter at Oper Frankfurt and Kaija Saariaho’s Emilie at Opéra de Lyon, as well as new productions of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and L’Enfant et les sortilèges at Glyndebourne and Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher at Opéra de Lyon. He has worked closely with boundary-breaking directors such as Dmitri Tcherniakov, Romeo Castellucci, Pierre Audi, William Kentridge and Mariusz Treliński
Ono is a vocal advocate for the role of culture in all our lives. During his time in Lyon he took part in a programme bringing opera to prisons and at TMSO he leads the inclusive SaLaD Music Festival, as well as working with community organisations for people with disabilities. In his new role in Brussels he will be part of an integration scheme for refugees. During the initial stages of the pandemic, he led ground-breaking research into the transmission of particles and the use of ventilation that meant that orchestras could get back to playing for audiences safely.
In 2017 he was awarded ‘Officier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ by French cultural minister Françoise Nyssen, adding to the prestigious Asahi Prize in January 2015, for his contribution to the development and progress of Japanese society.
https://www.kazushiono.com/

Eri NAKAMURA (Soprano)

Eri Nakamura is an alumna of Osaka College of Music and Opera Studio at New National Theatre, Tokyo. She made her debut at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2008. Between 2010-2016, Nakamura was a member of ensemble at Bayerische Staatsoper. She has appeared at opera houses such as Washington National Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Salzburger Landestheater. She made her debut at Wiener Staatsoper in 2016.

Mihoko FUJIMURA (Mezzo-soprano)

Mihoko Fujimura is one of the most soughtafter singers performing internationally. She was the first Japanese singer, singing a major role, to debut at the prestigious Bayreuth Festival. She returned to the festival for nine consecutive years, earning acclaim as a rare talent over two decades in the world of Wagner music. Since then, she has appeared in world famous opera houses including Staatsoper Wien. She also has performed with distinguished conductors including Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta and leading orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic.

In Japan, Mihoko Fujimura made her debut at the New National Theatre Tokyo singing Fricka in Der Ring des Nibelungen. Her solo performance for Beethoven’s ninth symphony with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, as well as her numerous opera performances and recitals, have been highly acclaimed. www.MihokoFujimura.com

photo©R&G Photography

New National Theatre Chorus (Chorus)

New National Theatre, Tokyo, opened in October 1997 as the only national theatre for the modern performing arts of Opera, Ballet, Contemporary Dance and Play. Meanwhile, New National Theatre Chorus started its career and has played a central role in many Opera performances all through the seasons. Their ensemble ability and rich voices have achieved acclaim from co-starred singers, conductors, directors, stage staffs as well as domestic and foreign media.

Program

Mahler: Symphony No.2 in C minor, "Auferstehung"

Program Notes

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor “Resurrection”

Ⅰ Allegro maestoso. With complete gravity and solemnity of expression
Ⅱ Andante moderato. Very easygoing. Not to be hurried at any point.
Ⅲ In quietly flowing motion
Ⅳ Urlicht (Primeval Light). Very solemn but simple, like a hymn
Ⅴ In the tempo of the scherzo; Bursting out wildly - Slow - Allegro energico - Slow
　- Very slow and expansive - Slow; Misterioso - Pesante

Gustav Mahler: Born in Kalischt, Bohemia, July 7, 1860; died in Vienna, May 18, 1911

　　“A symphony should be like the world; it must embrace everything,” declared Gustav Mahler. In no symphony is this belief more clearly manifest than in his Second, a work dealing with nothing less than the questions of life, death, and resurrection portrayed in often terrifying, apocalyptic visions. At nearly an hour and a half in length, it requires a large chorus, vocal soloists, backstage ensembles, organ, and the largest orchestra ever required for a single composition up to that time.
　　Mahler commenced work on this huge musical fresco in 1888, shortly after completing his First Symphony. At the time, he had no idea where things were headed. He began by writing a twenty-minute movement in C minor that he initially labeled Symphony No. 2 – 1st movement, but later changed to Totenfeier (Funeral Rite for the Dead), which would suggest that he intended it to stand alone as a symphonic poem.
　　Mahler began a second movement (Andante) soon after writing Totenfeier, then put it aside for nearly five years. In 1893 he orchestrated a song he had written and revised it into what became the symphonyʼs third movement. Also that year he set the poem “Urlicht” (Primeval Light), for contralto and orchestra. Both texts came from the anthology of German folk poetry known as Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youthʼs Magic Horn), edited by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, and published in 1806-08. The pieces were falling into place for an emerging symphonic colossus. But Mahler still had no idea how to bring these independent elements together into one coherent, unified structure. The solution came to him during a memorial service in March 1894 for the conductor Hans von Bülow. “The mood in which I sat there and thought about the departed, he later wrote, “was exactly that of the work that occupied me constantly at that time. Then the choir, next to the organ, intoned Klopstockʼs Resurrection chorale. It hit me like a flash of lightning …”
　　From that point, work on the symphonyʼs final installment surged forward, and it was completed by the summer of that year. The first performance took place in Berlin on December 13, 1895 with Mahler conducting the Berlin Philharmonic (the first three movements alone had been given on March 4). Interestingly enough, for all its obvious symbolism, Mahler himself never approved of the subtitle by which it is known today.
　　Anguish, distress and spiritual turmoil mark the symphonyʼs opening pages and color most of the remainder of the movement as well. The general tone is that of a funeral march, rooted in C minor. Relief is provided by a softly rising, radiant theme. Listeners will have no difficulty in identifying the point of recapitulation, which follows a merciless hammering by the entire orchestra on a series of excruciating dissonances, capped by one of the loudest climaxes in the entire symphony.
　　Mahler described the second movement as a “nostalgic dream.” Its relaxed, genial character is momentarily broken at times, most noticeably during the second appearance of the contrasting “B” episode (characterized by triplet figuration) in the movementʼs ABABA structure.
　　The scherzo is music of parody and sardonic humor. It is derived from the Wunderhorn song about the preaching of St. Anthony to the fishes. Like so many humans, they listen politely to his sermon about the emptiness of their lives, then swim away and go on behaving exactly as before. The twisting, curling melodic lines are punctuated by shouts, screams, laughs and chortles, as well as by exuberant fanfares. A featured instrument in this movement is the Rute, a birch brush struck against wood. The climax arrives with little warning, a moment Mahler called a “cry of despair of the tortured soul.” The end comes with equal abruptness, a plunge into the abyss.
　　Into the dark night of the soul steals a ray of hope, borne upon an entirely new sound, that of a female voice solemnly intoning the Wunderhorn song “Urlicht.” Those first words constitute one of the symphonyʼs most magical moments, all the more impressive for conveying so much with so little. The sublime profundity of the setting is maintained to the end, which dies away into silence.
　　Without pause, the final movement bursts forth with the force of a seismic upheaval. The visceral impact of this event, particularly in its striking contrast with the quiet serenity of the “Urlicht,” is truly frightening. When the din subsides, distant fanfares and wraithlike responses are heard, music Mahler called the “voice crying in the wilderness.”
　　Absorbed into the huge span of this movement − part opera, part cantata, part symphony − are solemn chorales, macabre marches, overwhelming climaxes, screeching dissonances, and finally, words of comfort. Following the “Great Call,” − a passage of haunting, even terrifying loneliness (performed entirely by an offstage ensemble except for the flute and piccolo, which to Mahler depicts here the fluttering “Bird of Death”) − the chorus begins the Klopstock poem of resurrection. Nearly inaudible at first, as if awestruck by the magnitude of its message, the voices slowly gather strength. Solo soprano and contralto add their words of hope and affirmation. Colors brighten. Rhythmic momentum increases. Onward and upward soar the voices, the orchestra, and the spirits, culminating in a great song of faith that shakes the foundations and raises the rafters.
　　As the final, exultant sounds of thundering drums, pealing bells, heavenly brass and the entire orchestral apparatus enriched by organ bring the Resurrection Symphony to a close, we might ponder these words by the Mahler scholar Deryck Cooke: “The Resurrection Symphony raises us, not into another world, but onto the plane of spiritual conflict and achievement where life alone has value and significance.”

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.

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TMSO Special（3/16）

Artists

Kazushi ONO (Music Director)

Eri NAKAMURA (Soprano)

Mihoko FUJIMURA (Mezzo-soprano)

New National Theatre Chorus (Chorus)

Program

Ticket Price

Baby sitting Service

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