Middlesex Arts: Summer Marches In

Nature inspired Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony, so what better choice for a spring concert than performing the piece that celebrates animals, flowers, meadows and mountains?

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is closing out its season with three performances of Mahler’s epic work, including a concert at New Brunswick’s State Theatre May 22 at 3 p.m.

“This is very much inspired by nature, and he was writing it when he was (spending the summer) at his country house in the Alps in Austria,” says Jacques Lacombe, music director for the NJSO and the conductor for the concerts. “You can hear the inspirations from nature, the third movement is sort of inspired by bird calls a little bit.”

Horns played backstage give a sense of distance, according to Lacombe, as if Mahler is surrounding the audience with the sounds of water rippling in a lake or wind breezing through mountains. “You experience sounds coming from different places,” he says. 

Mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel will sing the vocal parts in the piece’s fourth and fifth movements. Lebel is from Vancouver and is now based in Germany, where she and Lacombe performed Mahler’s Second Symphony two years ago.

“She was really wonderful,” Lacombe says, “so she was my first choice when I decided to program Mahler 3.”

The conductor wanted to work with Lebel because of her beautiful voice and her ability to find meaning in every word she sings.

“She has this quality and because she’s a fine musician, she’s capable of phrasing and bringing the word and finishing the word with a very special touch,” he says. “And few singers have this ability to be able to do that in German and she speaks German fluently, so that helps to bring the right power, the right weight, to each word.”

The piece also uses choirs. NJSO will be joined by the Princeton-based American Boychoir and the Montclair State University Chorale. Those choir appearances will be brief but they’re important.

“It’s interesting because the symphony is about an hour and a half and the choirs are required for the fifth movement, which is only about four minutes of music,” Lacombe says. “But it gives such a fresh breath, when it comes to this moment of the symphony, it’s a really great effect.”

The conductor is particularly excited about performing with the chorale from Montclair State because he worked with the group during his first concert for NJSO, a performance of “Carmina Burana” in November of 2008.

He was named the Orchestra’s musical director last year and is music director for the Orchestre Symphonique de Trois-Rivieres in Quebec. He was born in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Québec and now splits his time between his homes in Montreal and New Jersey.

It would seem that performing a long symphony might take weeks of rehearsals, but the orchestra first played the piece together for the first time just two days before the first concert. The orchestra has three regular rehearsals and one dress rehearsal before the curtain is raised on the first concert. The symphony will also perform the piece at Richardson Auditorium in Princeton May 20 and at NJPAC in Newark May 21.

“We have a tradition of playing together and playing this kind of repertoire even though we haven’t played this particular piece in 13 or 14 years, so for some musicians this will be their first time playing it,” Lacombe says. “But because we play together and work together on a regular basis, it allows us to prepare a piece like that in a relatively short period of time.”

Lacombe says that while Mahler’s first or fifth symphonies are performed more often, the third is a sort of hallmark for conductors. At 90 minutes, it’s Mahler’s longest symphony (NJSO will perform it without an intermission) and one of the longest in the standard repertoire. 

“It uses a fairly big orchestra,” Lacombe says. “But in my opinion it’s probably one of the most inspired in terms of (its music) and feeling that you get in a piece like that, it has a great depth to it. It’s one of his most important symphonies. Of course they’re all special but this one, for a lot of conductors, is one of the things that you really want to do and have in your repertoire. It’s a really wonderful piece of music.”

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will perform Mahler’s Third Symphony at the State Theatre, 15 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick, May 22, 3 p.m. Tickets cost $20-$82. Call 1-800-255-3476 or go to www.njsymphony.org for tickets and information.