Festival includes chamber and orchestra concerts with a focus on late works
By Peter Alexander May 11 at 2:10 p.m.
The 31stMahlerFest is all about late artistic transformations.
Kenneth Woods with the MahlerFest orchestra (Photo courtesy of MahlerFest)
The 2018 festival begins Monday, May 14, and culminates Saturday and Sunday, May 19 and 20, with concerts in Macky Auditorium featuring one of Mahler’s major orchestral works, Das Lied von der Erde (The song of the earth). It will be paired with the Seventh Symphony of Jean Sibelius.
Both works represent a farewell in music: Sibelius because he did not write another symphony in the remaining 24 years of his life, and Mahler because Das Lied von der Erde ends with a movement titled “The Farewell.”
Kenneth Woods (Photo by Christ Stock)
Beyond the orchestra concerts, the festival week includes other events, among them two chamber music concerts: a ticketed concert at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Dairy Center and a free concert at 2 p.m. Friday in the Academy Chapel. Other events open to the public include rehearsals, a scholarly symposium, and pre-concert lectures. (See the full schedule and list of performers here).
Kenneth Woods, the festival artistic director,says that the expansion of MahlerFest is a result of Mahler’s increasing popularity. “At first, MahlerFest may have been the only place in the Rocky Mountain region where a Mahler symphony was being done,” he says. “Now it’s not the rarity it once was. It’s nice to expand that wheel outward to other composers.”
Read more in Boulder Weekly.
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MahlerFest XXXI
Chamber Concert I
Daniel Silver, clarinet, and festival artists
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 16
Dairy Center for the Arts
Chamber Concert II
Karen Bentley Pollick, violin; Parry Karp, cello; and Jennifer Hayghe, piano
2 p.m. Friday, May 18
The Academy Chapel (FREE)
Orchestra Concert
Sibelius: Symphony No. 7
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
MahlerFest Orchestra, Kenneth Woods, conductor
Stacey Rishoi, mezzo-soprano, and Brennen Guillory, tenor
7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 19 and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, May 20
Macky Auditorium
Full schedule and tickets here.
Sharps & Flatirons 