Courtesy of Alison Harbaugh.
Gustav Mahler is a legend.
His Eighth Symphony is nicknamed the “Symphony of a Thousand,” as it’s one of the largest-scale choral works in history.
And his Second Symphony, “Resurrection,” is the crème de la crème – Mahler’s first major work involving what would become recurring themes of death and life.
It’s the piece musicians wait their whole lives to play, master of music student Jonathan Cain said.
“Mahler 2 is one of those pieces that everybody loves to play and everybody loves to hear,” said Jonathan Cain, who is pursuing his master of music in cello performance. “Classical musicians are like, ‘This is why we do it.'”
But junior music education major and violinist Becky Dreyman said most students have never even heard Mahler’s name – or Haydn’s, or Schumann’s, or Vivaldi’s.
“It’s not really what we listen to on the radio,” said Dreyman, who is a member of the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra (UMSO). “I think we place a high emphasis on really being pumped up and excited by the music we listen to.”
This university’s New Lights Initiative is out there to make the world of classical music accessible to young people who are often turned off by the concert hall’s atmosphere, its website said.
The symphony orchestra’s New Lights Student Committee, comprised of undergraduate and graduate music majors and branched off from the university’s larger group, has the same goal and has been presenting behind-the-scenes concert material in the form of video and post-concert discussions.
And today at 3:30 p.m. – in a performance led by the student committee – 260 musicians from UMSO and the university Concert Choir are bringing to life a performance of Mahler 2 in CSPAC’s Grand Pavilion.
John Devlin, who heads the student committee, said it won’t be the traditional Mahler 2 in concert setting – audience members are in for a surprise.
“It’s hard to say, ‘We’re playing music by dead white German guys in tuxedos, and you have to clap,'” said Devlin, who is pursuing a DMA in conducting. “We’ve been working all year to present music in a way that it’s not traditionally done.”
Director of Orchestral Activities James Ross and then Artist-in-Residence Greg Sandow, a Juilliard graduate, started the New Lights Initiative in 2009. It has since gone on to clothe its orchestras in colorful attire and present multimedia during its pieces to attract a wider audience, New Lights’ website says.
While there are several other audience-expansion classical music initiatives in the Washington area and beyond, New Lights is one that is solely Maryland’s.
“There’s a lot of people that are pushing to do these really exciting things in the concert halls, and university level is really a great place to see that happen,” Dreyman said. “There aren’t the same pressures of complete tradition that there might be in traditional orchestras throughout the country and I think that this is the place that it will happen first.”
The culminating school year presented a great opportunity for the committee to end things with a bang, Devlin said.
Cain, who is involved with the student committee, said that the sheer number of people involved in the performance will energize the CSPAC lobby.
“You walk down the halls and every single person you see is participating in this event,” Cain said. “It’s kind of a cool capstone at the end of the year where basically everybody in the school comes together and puts on this one performance of this one piece.”
But the tug-of-war between attracting new audiences and retaining current concertgoers is a constant concern in the music world, Devlin said.
He said that while engaging initiatives such as multimedia can attract some members, he has also heard complaints that the added effects distract from the performance.
But the end goal remains the same: to help the audience realize the beauty of classical music, freshman violin performance major and New Lights Committee member Aurora Wheeland said.
“Anything that has lyrics in it, they’re sort of propelling you, guiding you to what you can experience and what you can take from that song,” Wheeland said. “But with classical music, everyone can have their own, very unique experience – their own way of interpreting what the music means to them.”
Musicians from the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra and University of Maryland Concert Choir are performing Mahler’s Second Symphony today in CSPAC’s Grand Pavilion at 3:30. The performance is free.
raghavendran@umdbk.com
