Baritone Matthias Goerne sings "Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgeh'n" ("Now will the sun rise just as brightly"), the opening song of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, with Jonathan Nott conducting the Mahler Youth Orchestra, at a Proms concert in the Royal Albert Hall, Sept. 4, 2009.
Now will the sun rise just as brightly
as if no misfortune had happened in the night.
The misfortune happened to me alone;
the sun shines for everyone.
Your must not hoard the night within,
it must be absorbed into the eternal light.
A little lamp in my shelter has gone out;
hail to the joyful light of the world!
-- translation by Lucy E. Cross
by Ken
Aa promised, after focusing on the last of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), "In diesem Wetter" ("In this weather"), with its final stanza minor-to-major "switcheroo," in Friday night's preview, today we hear the whole of this haunting song cycle.
It's worth recalling that at the time Mahler undertook to set this handful of the poems written on the subject by Friedrich Rückert, his own daughters were still healthy, and Alma Mahler was more than a little upset at this challenge to fate. This was likely not ameliorated as their own tragedies struck. A case could be made that she never forgave him.
In the case of other Mahler songs we've listened as well to the original piano-accompanied settings. We're going to skip that in the case of this cycle we're going to skip that step. It would be especially hard to forego Mahler's orchestral setting, which is notably spare and chamberlike -- the chilly, melancholy opening oboe-and-horn duet sets the tone. There's a normal complement of woodwinds, but of brasses there are only horns, a pair in Nos. 1-4 and four in "In diesem Wetter," and there are only dabs of percussion. The harp is a notable presence.
