"If you don't come to this performance, the next one may be in another 100 years," warns Julian Kuerti, music director of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, on the ensemble's upcoming performance of Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony.
The KSO, now in its 105th year, has never before performed the work — making Saturday's concert at Miller Auditorium a genuine local premiere. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. and features the WMU Grand Chorus, prepared by Amanda Quist, alongside the Kalamazoo Children's Chorus and mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel. The orchestra will field nine horns for the occasion.
Kuerti walks Lieurance through the symphony's ambitious structure, explaining that Mahler conceived the six-movement work as a spiritual pyramid ascending through all of creation. The opening movement depicts Pan waking and the birth of the universe; subsequent movements portray the plant world, the animal world, and humanity, before rising to the angels and concluding with what Mahler titled What Love Tells Me — a cosmic, all-encompassing love that Kuerti describes as deeply spiritual.
The fourth movement introduces the human voice for the first time, setting a text drawn from Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, known as Mahler's "Midnight Song." The fifth movement brings in the choruses, with the children's voices opening by singing "bim-bam" to evoke bells. Kuerti notes that the fourth, fifth, and sixth movements flow without pause.
Supertitles, coordinated by KSO staff member Sidney Schless in close collaboration with Kuerti, will display English translations of the German text on screens flanking the Miller Auditorium stage.
The symphony runs approximately 90 minutes. Tickets are available at kalamazoosymphony.com.
The audio interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
