ZIBIN ZHOU, HARPIST

For the fourth year in a row, TŌN opens the season with a Mahler symphony. The Third is the composer’s longest work, a deeply personal and all-encompassing masterpiece that stands as a towering monument to nature and humankind’s place within it. Mahler described the symphony as having a “steady intensification of feeling, from the indistinct, unyielding, elemental existences (of the forces of nature), to the tender formation of the human heart, which in turn points toward and reaches a region beyond itself (God).” Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe—a Musical America Vocalist of the Year, Opera News, and Richard Tucker Award-winner—joins the orchestra for two of the symphony’s six movements, singing text by Nietzsche telling of joy transcending death and worldly suffering, and then a German folk poem about heavenly joy rewarding the faithful.