Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 31, 1990 TAG: 9003310153
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The performance will be Monday at 8 p.m. in the Roanoke Civic Center auditorium, with Victoria Bond conducting.
Soprano Diana Walker will be guest soloist.
Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G Major is built around a song about childhood naivete, which in turn was inspired by a German traditional poem. The song was intended for the final movement of his third symphony. Instead, Mahler decided to make it the basis of the fourth.
The work premiered in Munich in 1902 but underwent four subsequent revisions. Mahler himself conducted the premiere of the final version in New York on Jan. 17, 1911. He died a few months later.
Walker has performed with the New York City Opera, the Seattle Opera, the Opera Theater of St. Louis and the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, among others. She made her European debut in 1988 with L'Opera de Nice.
Walker and Bond first worked together in 1985, when Bond was on a conducting internship with the New York City Opera and Walker appeared with the company in Prokofiev's "Love of Three Oranges." Last year, Walker appeared with the Utah Symphony Orchestra and the Oratorio Society of Utah to do Handel's "Messiah" with Bond as guest conductor.
Bond praised Walker's vocal timbre, or tone quality, as "crystal pure."
"It's perfect for Mahler," the conductor said.
With Monday's concert, the orchestra resumes the practice of performing a work by Brahms on each of the season's subscription programs. The pattern was interrupted at the last concert when guest soloist Eugene Istomin, recovering from hand surgery, asked to substitute Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto for Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major.
The fourth symphony was Brahms' last. He wrote it during the summers of 1884 and 1885 and was 52 years old when it was completed. The piece is noted for what musicologist Edward Downes describes as "a wonderful autumnal warmth and strength."
Brahms himself conducted the first performance of the symphony in the German city of Meiningen in 1885. The Boston Symphony was to premiere the work in the U.S. on Nov. 26, 1886, with Brahms conducting, but the orchestra's regular conductor was dissatisfied with rehearsals and withdrew the work for further preparation. The American premiere came the following Dec. 11, with Walter Damrosch conducting the Symphony Society of New York.
Victoria Bond conducted Brahms' Symphony No. 4 recently in a guest appearance with New York's Manhattan Symphony Orchestra.
Inquiries about tickets to Monday's concert should be directed to the civic center box office at 981-1201.
by CNB