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Because the piece is so intensive to stage, the orchestra has only prepared and performed it a handful of times throughout its history: first in 1972, with Seiji Ozawa conducting, and most recently in 2005 with James Levine. (Current music director Andris Nelsons led it with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in 2015.) For the singers of the TFC, the all-volunteer ensemble that performs with the BSO and Boston Pops, it’s not just a banner event for the season. It’s one of the most demanding and rewarding pieces they could do, and for some singers, it was reason enough to delay their retirement.
It’s a “powerhouse of a piece,” said 44-year member Irene (”Rini”) Gilbride, who initially planned to retire after this season at Tanglewood but “wrote a letter and poured it on thick,” she said, asking if she could stick around for the Mahler symphony. It had been the first piece she ever sang with the TFC in 1980, after founding director John Oliver put out a “cattle call” for singers, she said in a phone interview.
The symphony is divided into two parts, the first based on the Latin hymn “Veni creator spiritus,” and the second and longer in German, depicting the final scene of Goethe’s “Faust.” The whole thing lasts around 90 minutes, and unlike other choral symphonies such as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 or Mahler’s own Symphony No. 2, the chorus doesn’t just show up for the grand finale. Their joyful fortissimo cry is the first sound the audience hears after the organ plays a single measure at the beginning; the longest rest the singers get is a brief instrumental interlude near the beginning of Part II.
The TFC has around 200 members in total, and each singer submits availability for various projects throughout the year, explained BSO manager of choral activities Jana Hieber. With that data in hand, Hieber and BSO choral director and TFC conductor James Burton work together to assemble rosters. They knew they wanted “as many as possible” for “Symphony of a Thousand,” and invited all current singers as well as several alumni. “We got a small handful of singers who were glad to come back just for this,” said Hieber, who sang with the TFC herself before she took the manager job. Ultimately, the TFC contingent for this weekend’s performances added up to 135.
It’s the first run at the piece for many of the chorus’s newer members, including bass Alex Weir, who joined in 2018 while he was a student at Northeastern University. “This is definitely a challenging piece,” said Weir. “But James [Burton] does a really fantastic job of preparing the chorus, so it’s been a pleasure to get ready.”
Tenor David Norris, who also joined for the same 1980 performance as Gilbride and plans to retire after this weekend, praised Burton’s attention to detail. “We always use the score, and every time we rehearse, he expects that we do it with pencil in hand,” he said. “Every time he gives us notes, he wants us to put something into the score.”
The vocal part writing is “very, very difficult, but we can do it,” said Stephanie Riley, a soprano and public school music teacher who joined the chorus in 2017 and regularly endures Cape Cod traffic to make it to rehearsal. The “wide range of music that I haven’t had an opportunity to do” is one aspect that keeps her coming back, she said, as is the adrenaline rush of performing. “I stand either right in front of the French horn’s bells or the bass drum, and the sound just immediately hits you, and it’s this wave I can’t really describe,” Riley said. “You only feel, and there’s nothing like it.”
The importance of the friends she’s made in the chorus can’t be discounted, either. “They truly become a big part of your life,” she said. “Even with me being down on the Cape and some of these other people in the Worcester area, we find ways to get together.”
It’s natural to develop strong connections when “you spend so much time sharing this thing that is so important to you, and so much a part of your soul,” said Norris. “I don’t think I’ve had one [Mahler] rehearsal where I haven’t had tears in my eyes as we’re working on the piece.”
Singing with the TFC “just feeds your soul,” Gilbride echoed. When the death of someone close to her “just coincided with a Brahms Requiem, it became a total catharsis to be able to look up at the lights of the hall, and see the images of people who had passed, and sing to them.”
It took Gilbride a while to even comprehend that she might leave someday. “Even though the schedule is hellacious at times, that’s when you’re meeting up with your friends,” she said. “That’s when you’re singing. That’s when your body is reacting to the music. Your whole sense of being comes alive.”
Norris, a father of five and grandfather of six, said his family has been teasing him because he’s planned to retire a few times already. “So I’m not sure they’re buying it yet!” he said.
But one morning this summer, when Norris and his family were staying together at a rented house in the Berkshires, he bid his 8-year-old granddaughter goodbye before a Saturday morning open rehearsal with the TFC, explaining he had to go to Tanglewood early to warm up.
“And she said to me, ‘But ‘Buppie,’ this is Tanglewood,” he recalled. “She reminded me that even though I may not be out there up on stage, all that Tanglewood has to offer is still available to us.” So he told her: “You’re right. It is Tanglewood, and I promise you we’ll be back here next summer.”
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @knitandlisten.
