Gustav Mahler has gone down in history for his claims that his mostly huge symphonies embraced a whole world within their pages.
Here there are veritable symphonic panoramas that one minute might evoke the sound of a solitary cow bell floating towards us as if from the remote Alps and then go on to mix clangorous marches and earthy peasant dances with soul-wrenching slow movements.
All this and more will be delivered next weekend by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with conductor Pietari Inkinen and mezzosoprano Ekaterina Semenchuk.
The featured work, contributing more than its fair share to the Auckland Festival's spectacle quota, is Mahler's mighty Third Symphony.
It was the Third that caused Mahler to chide Bruno Walter when he caught the young conductor gazing at the scenery at Steinbach am Attersee, where the composer had penned this particular score. Mahler's retort was, "You need not stand staring at that - I have already composed it all."
This Third Symphony is much more than easy pictorialism. Mahler engages with his world on the deepest of spiritual levels, commenting on the delicate and crucial relationship between man and his surroundings. It is a journey that moves from the dramatic sprawl of the first movement to those "delicate creations of the human heart" which, in Mahler's eyes, pointed the way to God.
Thrills abound in the 30 minutes of the symphony's opening movement in which we hear what its composer describes as "summer marching in, singing and resonant in a way you cannot imagine".
With this horn-laden march and another more caustic specimen that could have strayed in from Bizet's Carmen, it becomes clear that Mahler's musical world is nothing if not all-embracing.
And so, as the movements pass by, man is taught the secrets of life by the flowers, the animals, fellow man, the angels and, finally, love. Love comes in a great 25-minute slow movement that, as Walter put it, is a "single sound of heartfelt and exalted feelings in which the whole giant structure finds its musical culmination".
The fourth and fifth movements see Mahler, as he was wont to do, calling on the human voice. First up is a mezzo soloist singing sombre and soul-searching words from Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. The angels then chime in with their cheering answer; a bevy of bells, children's and women's voices.
Belarussian mezzo Ekaterina Semenchuk will be the featured soloist next Friday and Saturday and she has performed the work before, in the illustrious company of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop, opening the BSO's 2007-08 season. Semenchuk has been making a name for herself on both sides of the Atlantic. Her repertoire ranges from the Russian classics to Carmen, her next operatic assignment in Leipzig. Mahler, Nietzsche and Semenchuk look to be an intriguing combination.
Auckland Festival
What: Mahler Symphony No 3 with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Friday, March 13, and Saturday, March 14, 6.30pm
Mahler Symphony No 3 at the Auckland Town Hall
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