The music will stir the senses.
“People can expect an absolutely emotionally overwhelming experience,” Maestro Andrew Grams said.
The Elgin Symphony Orchestra will present its last concert of the season, “Season Finale: Full Sound… Full Joy,” at 7:30 p.m. May 2 and at 2:30 p.m. May 3 at the Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin.
Two pieces will be performed at ESO’s spring finale concert: Gustav Mahler’s single-movement symphonic poem, “Totenfeier,” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. While they are different in emotional context, the pieces are related, said Grams, who will be conducting the concerts.
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“The common theme is Gustav Mahler,” he said.
The first selection, “Totenfeier,” is a relatively early work of Mahler’s. The title is German for funeral rite.
“It’s a symphonic poem meant to describe a funeral procession and all the accompanying feelings, emotions and fears that go along with such a dark subject matter,” said Grams, the music director at ESO.
Grams said “Totenfeier” later became the first movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony.
“Which is based on the ninth symphony of Beethoven, in that you have this beginning normal symphony, but both finales utilize chorus and vocal soloists,” he said. “So there’s that link there between both pieces.”
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, considered to the composer’s most popular, features the uplifting “Ode to Joy.” The choral symphony features words from Friedrich Schiller’s poem of the same name in the final movement.
“He chose those elements so he could transmit text, so that he could transmit Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’ in a musical, but still utilizing the words at the same time,” Grams said.
Performing with the ESO on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony are Elgin Master Chorale, Heartland Voices, soprano Katie Van Kooten, mezzo-soprano Beth Lytwynec, tenor Benjamin Butterfield and bass-baritone Kevin Deas.
Aside from the annual holiday concert, this concert marks the first time this season that choral elements are included.
Elgin Symphony Orchestra will perform Mahler’s arrangement of Beethoven’s symphony.
“We say that it’s arranged by Mahler, but that’s not entirely accurate because Mahler didn’t really arrange anything. He didn’t change any of the notes. He didn’t change any of the music,” Grams said. “It’s Beethoven’s ninth as we know it, all he did was make it much bigger. So he thought to himself if Beethoven could have the instruments that we have today – the modern instruments – and if he could have a larger orchestra, would he? And Mahler thought to himself, ‘Yes, actually he really would.’
“So we have more instruments on stage. We have the same Beethoven music, just amplified,” Grams said.
The music selected for this concert, and throughout this past season, Grams said, is meant to highlight the relationship between him and the orchestra.
“This last season that we’re finishing with, my idea was to highlight the relationship between me and the orchestra that is still very new,” he said. “And I wanted to highlight that relationship by giving the public pieces of music that they would know, so that they could see how the orchestra and I were getting along together. I think this first season that we’re finishing off is going to lead very nicely into next season.”
The first concert of next season will feature the First Symphony of Johannes Brahms, he said.
“When it premiered, it was immediately talked about and hailed as being Beethoven’s 10th symphony had Beethoven continued to live, because it was very much in that vein and a young Brahms had taken up the symphonic mantle that Beethoven had left,” Grams said. “So our musical journey together as an orchestra, myself and the public, is a multi-year journey that is going to go through music where everything that we’ve done will be connected to everything that we do.”
Grams, who was selected as the music director for the Elgin Symphony Orchestra in June 2013 after a two-year, international search, led the orchestra for seven concerts this season, and the first three concerts of the 2013-2014 season.
“I’ve been having a great time,” he said. “The orchestra and I, our relationship is deepening each time we work together, and I’m very excited to see how far we can go.”
Elgin Symphony Orchestra
When: May 2-3
Where: Hemmens Cultural Center, 45 Symphony Way, Elgin
Tickets: $25-$60
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Information: 847-888-4000 or http://www.elginsymphony.org
Cichon is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.