Shared denouements

Mahler's 5th Symphony, for some reason, seems to be a favorite final piece for a conductor leaving his post. This past Sunday my wife and I heard Jeffrey Kahane lead the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in rousing and emotional performance of the 5th. While the CSO had performed it on Friday and Saturday, Sunday's was Kahane's valedictory performance as the Music Director for the CSO. At the end, the large crowd sprang to their feet, cheering, whistling and applauding Kahane's tenure.

In the summer of 1999, Giora Bernstein also chose to end his career as the Music Director of Colorado Music Festival, in Boulder, with a performance of Mahler's 5th. Giora was the founder of CMF and it's conductor and music director for over 20 years. He was a fan of Mahler and Brahms, Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. Giora was adventuresome, once programming the long Bruckner's 8th, Chavez's 1st Symphony, and George Crumb's "Ancient Voices of Children". I was always mystified as to why Giora chose to end with Mahler's 5th.

Mahler's 5th is a long piece, with a beautiful and familiar "Adagietto", with a glorious and happy ending. But it's the ending that puzzles me the most. It's not as grand or as overwhelming as the 2nd or 3rd. The strings slide upward to a brass minor chord and bass drum thump, then a full orchestral chord and another thump. I don't know why, but that last 15 seconds always seems to me as if Mahler was thumbing his nose. I hope neither Giora or Jeffrey Kahane felt that way.

In mentioning the "Adagietto" I'm also reminded of my growing displeasure with our local "classical" music station, KVOD. Many months ago they switched frequencies and lost most of Boulder listeners who couldn't receive their signal. Now, KVOD is also broadcasting on another frequency that comes in stronger, sometimes. But it's not their signal I'm concerned about but the content. Colorado Public Radio, CPR, was always somewhat of a "kitch" classical music provider. Play popular and short, ignore the challenging and long. Now, I've noticed that they are at times only broadcasting individual movements of longer works of art. They would broadcast Mahler's "Adagietto" but not the whole 5th symphony. A few weeks back they played one movement from Elgar's "Enigma Variations". So would it really be a variation? You couldn't say "Enigma Variation" (singular) since a variation assumes a base for comparison. No base, no comparison, no variation. I guess it should have been announced as Elgar's "Interesting piece of music". Bah!

I wonder if there has been some change of commercial broadcasting rights? Perhaps copyright enforcers now limit over-the-air transmissions to individual tracks, as they do on internet radio stations. If so, this is desceration of art, legally enforced.

Since I'm complaining, I'll also return to an annoyance about the Colorado Music Festival and their web site. The site is decent enough but I was unable to find any reference to Giora Bernstein, their founder and music director for over 20 years. A shameful omission.