United States Sun Valley Music Festival [1]: Sun Valley Pavilion, Sun Valley, Idaho, 11 & 12.8.2024. (RP)
On a Sunday evening with perfect weather, 3177 people heard Mahler’s Symphony No.6 performed by the Sun Valley Festival Orchestra under the baton of music director Alasdair Neale. That would be an impressive number anywhere, but what makes it especially so is that admission is free.
The SVMF is celebrating its fortieth anniversary, and free music for all has been their ethos from the beginning. The start time at 6:30 in the evening and an hour-long program are all but inviolable, but with a work like the Mahler Sixth, rules are obviously meant to be broken.
Another special aspect of the orchestra is its relationship with the community. Neale, now in his thirtieth year as the festival’s music director, says people in the Sun Valley area think of it as ‘our orchestra’. The community’s embrace extends beyond financial support, volunteering in various capacities and attendance at concerts: more than eighty supporters host musicians for the month they are in Sun Valley rehearsing and performing.
When Neale arrived at the world-famous ski resort in 1994, he was hired to conduct a chamber orchestra that performed in a pop-up tent on a gravel surface. He dreamed of a permanent structure for the orchestra and in 2008, largely due to the efforts of the late Robert Earl Holding, it became a reality. Holding was the owner of Sun Valley Resort, founded in 1936 by Union Pacific scion Averill Harriman. Neale describes Holding’s approach as, ‘If something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing’. So it was with the Sun Valley Pavilion.
The resulting structure, which consists of an arced tubular steel truss and translucent tent fabric, was completed in 2008. The setting in the Rocky Mountains of central Idaho is spectacular, and its form echoes the gently rolling slopes of Dollar Mountain beyond. Under the tented structure, the pavilion can seat 1561, with seating for another 4000 on the grass. The pavilion’s walls are made of 1000 tons of travertine marble extracted from the same quarry that supplied the Colosseum in Rome. Perhaps of more importance, the pavilion has superb acoustics.
Mahler once referred to his Sixth Symphony as ‘Tragic’, although it was composed at one of the happiest times of his life. It was completed over the summers of 1903 and 1904 at the Wörthersee in Austria where Mahler summered with his wife Alma and two daughters. He was preoccupied with gloomy thoughts – in addition to the symphony, he was working on Kindertotenlieder, a song cycle ruminating on the death of children.
Whether or not premonitions of doom were imbedded in the symphony, misfortune undoubtedly came his way. Within a year of the symphony’s premiere in 1906, Mahler’s four-year-old daughter Maria died, his ultimately fatal heart condition was diagnosed, and he left the Vienna Opera, where he had been director since 1897, under a cloud.
It was unavoidable that Neale would delve deeply into the tragic depths of the symphony, but this performance also contained moments of absolute joy and aching lyricism. Neale met the symphony’s contradictions head on. Mahler’s tempo markings for the first movement – Allegro energico man non troppo heftig aber markig, meaning ‘energetically fast, but not too much, vigorous but emphatic’ – were heeded, with the result being a reading of this monumental movement that was taut and exciting.
The sound produced by the 107 musicians on stage had a visceral vibrancy and immediacy. In the first movement, the brass playing was superb, but never more so than in the coda where it was loud, wonderful and brimming with optimism. Three cymbals crashing in the final movement were as exciting to watch as they were terrifying to hear.
Mahler called for musical special effects throughout the piece, most notably in the use of cowbells and a percussion instrument that came to be known as the ‘Mahler hammer’. The outdoor setting yielded sonic delights with bells and chimes resonating from inside the hall as well as outside. Those sounds lent a certain lightness to the performance.
Doom was to follow, however, with great slashes of sound in the Finale, which Mahler instructed were to be ‘brief and mighty but dull in resonance and with a non-metallic character – like the fall of an axe’. The solution for this performance was a purpose-built wooden box which Neale said was dubbed the ‘Big Brown Box of Doom’. When struck twice with an oversized mallet borrowed from the San Francisco Orchestra, the resulting sound was loud and ominous.
The members of the Sun Valley Music Festival Orchestra have positions with some of America’s best symphonies, and the quality of playing was at the highest level. Mahler peppered the score with solo passages that were performed superbly. Principal horn Elizabeth Freimuth’s tone was molten and rich throughout and, in the first movement, her sound blended splendidly with that of concertmaster Jeremy Constant. As with Freimuth, principal oboe Erik Behr’s playing lent character and beauty at all turns.
After the exhilaration and excess of Mahler, the ear was cleansed the following evening with a short concert in the pavilion performed by a wind quintet comprised of principal flautist Ann Choomack, principal clarinetist Susan Warner and principal bassoonist Andrew Cuneo, together with Behr and Freimuth. It was pure ear candy but of the best sort.
The first work on the program was Aaron Copland’s ‘Simple Gifts’, arranged by Warner. Cuneo introduced the familiar melody on the bassoon, with the four other instruments providing musical punctuation. Warner’s arrangement captured the simplicity of the nineteenth-century Shaker song while investing it with singular sonorities and a great depth of feeling.
Passion reigned in the quintet’s performance of Jacob Gade’s ‘Tango Jalousie’ dating from 1924. The Danish composer was inspired to compose the piece after reading a sensational news report of a crime of passion and becoming fixated on the concept of jealousy.
It was followed by three of twentieth-century composer Ferenc Farkas’s Early Hungarian Dances. This was far earthier music with completely different rhythms and textures than any of the other pieces. It was, however, as piquant as the tango that preceded it and two selections from the Cuban-American composer Paquito D’Rivera’s Aires Tropicales which brought the concert to an end.
Rick Perdian
11.8.2024 – Sun Valley Music Festival Orchestra / Alasdair Neale (conductor).
Mahler – Symphony No.6 in A minor, ‘Tragic’
12.8.2024 – Ann Choomack (flute), Erik Behr (oboe), Susan Warner (clarinet), Andrew Cuneo (bassoon), Elizabeth Freimuth (horn).
Copland (arr. Susan Warner) – ‘Simple Gifts’ from Appalachian Spring
Jacob Gade (arr. Stig Jorgensen) – ‘Tango Jalousie’
Ferenc Farkas – Early Hungarian Dances: I. Intrada, IV. Chorea, V. Ugros
Paquito D’Rivera – Aires Tropicales: IV. ‘Vals Venezolano’, V. ‘Contradanza’