The Shepherd School of Music’s journey through the works of Gustav Mahler will take years to complete. Its first night sold out.
Miguel Harth-Bedoya, distinguished resident director of orchestras and professor of conducting, led the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, “Titan,” Oct. 24 at Stude Concert Hall. The program also included excerpts from Amy Beach’s “Gaelic Symphony” and Dame Ethel Smyth’s opera “The Wreckers.”
Over the coming seasons, the Shepherd School orchestras will work through Mahler’s symphonies and a selection of his orchestral songs. Harth-Bedoya said the first symphony is a great natural starting point because Mahler summons the natural world from its opening bars.
“This journey will take us nearly to the end of Mahler’s life,” Harth-Bedoya said. “He never had the chance to hear his last symphony, but we can live his life through his works.”
Eight days before the concert, James Gaffigan ’03 spent an hour coaching the orchestra on “Titan.” Gaffigan, music director designate of Houston Grand Opera who is currently conducting its production of “Susannah,” studied at the Shepherd School under the late Larry Rachleff, who led its orchestras for more than three decades and whom Harth-Bedoya succeeded. Since leaving Rice, Gaffigan has conducted at the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera and Opéra National de Paris.
“Mahler’s symphonies are vast and they require tremendous forces and a great many musicians,” Harth-Bedoya said. “We are lucky to have those resources at the Shepherd School, so when our students graduate, these works will be part of their canon of orchestral repertoire.”
The journey continues Nov. 7 at 7:30 p.m. in Stude Concert Hall when Shepherd School vocalists join the orchestra for three of Mahler’s orchestral songs. Among them is “Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld,” whose melody Mahler later carried into the opening movement of “Titan.”
