The big headline this week is Opera Philadelphia doubling down on the boldness of their still-unfinished first season under Anthony Roth Costanzo, but there’s much to enjoy this week as well.
Spotlight: Mahler’s Sixth — Thursday, Friday, and Sunday, Marian Anderson Hall
The Philadelphia Orchestra has been sharing numerous videos on social media featuring Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s commentary on the repertoire this season. About their upcoming performances of Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, he says: “We don’t always have to be optimistic.” Certainly ironic coming from the famously jovial conductor (which he goes on to acknowledge), but it might hit the nail right on the head for some people these days.
Mahler’s Sixth is indeed a sad one. The symphony’s hero is felled, as a tree, by three climactic hammer blows of fate. Mahler’s wife, Alma, suggested that this may have been a reference to himself, and after the premiere he did soon suffer three of his own blows: his eldest daughter’s sudden passing, his dismissal from the Vienna State Opera, and his diagnosis of a heart condition which would take his life within the decade. There are actually only two hammered notes in the score — principal percussionist and hammerer Christopher Deviney suggests that Mahler didn’t believe he could survive the three blows he originally wrote (though some conductors have, in fact, restored the third).
We will be in our feelings with this work, and not just sadness — he actually wrote the symphony at one of the happiest times of his life, which he expresses musically in the beginning, referring to his wife and their two children. The children’s erratic play slowly fades into their musical deaths, making the ending all the more tragic, especially considering what was to come for the composer. So will end our roughly 80-minute immersion in exquisite musical gloom. After two of the three performances, audiences will walk out into the daylight.
April 10 at 7:30 p.m., April 11 and 13 at 2 p.m., Marian Anderson Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, 300 South Broad Street, $25-$166, tickets and information.
Jeffrey Brillhart — Tuesday, Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church
On Tuesdays during Lent, Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church presents free organ recitals in their sanctuary. This week, their music director and organist extraordinaire Jeffrey Brillhart will be at the keys and pedals. It’s an entirely improvised program this time around, with Brillhart giving his musical interpretations of the Seven Last Words of Christ — as in, how those seven last words would translate into musical notation, so think B-A-C-H or C-L-A-R-A, but on a larger and more complex scale.
April 8 at 12 p.m., Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, 625 Montgomery Avenue, Bryn Mawr, free, more information.
Doric Quartet — Tuesday, Perelman Theater
The Doric String Quartet is an ensemble for all times, their repertoire running the gamut from the earliest string quartets to today’s music. Their program this Tuesday focuses on the earlier side with two formative names in the genre, but it’s certainly a swing to go from late Beethoven to early Haydn back to late Beethoven, and their interpretations are always top-notch. If you’re going to catch Mahler's Sixth later this week, you can get an early dose of music addressing fate with the opener, Beethoven’s final quartet.
April 8 at 7:30 p.m., Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, 300 South Broad Street, $30; tickets and information.
Jordi Savall / Hespèrion XXI — Thursday, Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral
Spanish viola da gamba master Jordi Savall brings his ensemble Hespèrion XXI to one of the most resonant spaces in town, the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral. Savall’s performances are the product of research that would warm kindred souls in library exploration and crate-digging, uncovering lost works and giving them new life, as well as reinvigorating the repertoire we already know — an approach that resonates with new music enthusiasts as well.
April 10 at 7:30 p.m., Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, 19 South 38th Street, $56; tickets and more information.
Candide — Friday and Sunday, The Forrest Theatre
Note: The entire Company of this production does not honestly believe that reading this
synopsis will help you at all, but if you'd like to try to follow the plot, good luck!
That’s at the top of the synopsis of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, which Curtis Opera Theatre will be performing this weekend. There is war, disaster, and personal entanglement that makes it all the more miraculous that this is evidently a world where death has no consequence; everyone doesn’t, but also does, make it to the end. For me, that’s an entertaining enough mind bend to keep me watching, but there also just happens to be some of the most spectacular, cathartic, and exciting music in American opera — that’s what you’re going for.
April 11 at 7 p.m., April 13 at 2 p.m., The Forrest Theatre, 1114 Walnut Street, $35-$77; tickets and information.
Looking ahead:
McGill brothers, Titus Underwood, and Bryan Young — April 16, Perelman Theater
St. John Passion — April 18, St. Katherine of Siena, Wayne
Michelle Cann & Imani Winds — April 23, Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music
Chris Thile — April 23, Marian Anderson Hall
Don Giovanni — starts April 25, Academy of Music
