On Sunday, March 2, UCLA Philharmonia took the stage at Disney Hall as part of the LA Philharmonic’s “Mahlerthon,” a daylong event celebrating the symphonies and chamber music of Gustav Mahler. Part one featured Los Angeles-area youth orchestras. Part two featured chamber pieces and two full-length Mahler Symphonies. Under the baton of Neal Stulberg, director of orchestral studies, the UCLA Philharmonia — 113 strong — opened the evening’s program with a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 (“Tragic”) that elicited an immediate standing ovation from the sold-out concert hall.
Mahler composed the symphony during a time of personal fulfillment and worldwide professional success. Nonetheless, the work is turbulent and “relentlessly serious,” according to Stulberg, exploring the far extremes of human emotion. The score calls for a gigantic orchestra and features several innovations, including the Almglocken (cowbells) and the so-called “Mahler Hammer” (see below for a demonstration). Mahler himself once wrote “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.” As Stulberg explained: “Never was this more true than for the taut and kaleidoscopic Sith.”
Congratulations to all the members of the UCLA Philharmonia on their Disney Hall triumph. Faculty and staff were on hand in the audience and snapped a few pictures of the special evening. You have seen them on social media, and we have collected some of them here.
The percussion section dropped the Hammer of Fate at two dramatic moments in the fourth movement
Maddie Bottenberg of the percussion studio had to time the hammer crash perfectly. Watch below as she delivers the second crushing blow.
An Evening to Remember
