Mahler’s Fifth: Landscapes of Emotion

SLSO Principal Trumpet Steven Franklin joins Assistant Conductor Sam Hollister to explore a program that pairs new music with a towering orchestral masterpiece. Franklin shares his approach to preparing works by living composers like Carlos Simon, reflects on his long relationship with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and offers insight into one of the most iconic trumpet solos in the repertoire. He also discusses the role of the trumpet within the larger brass section and the artistry behind choosing the right instrument to shape the sound of the orchestra.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Noted, a podcast that offers a quick look at the personal stories and perspectives behind each SLSO classical program. I'm Sam Hollister, assistant conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Led by music director Stefan Deneve, this week's program begins with Carlos Simon's double concerto suite, featuring violinist Hilary Hahn and cellist Seth Parker Woods in his SLSO debut. The concert concludes with Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Today I'm excited to be joined by SLSO principal trumpet Stephen Franklin. Stephen, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. We're fortunate to be featuring an extraordinary living composer on this concert, Carlos Simon. But some of our listeners might not know that you're also a composer. Can you tell us a bit about the kind of music you write and how on earth you find the time?

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Well, I'm not sure it's so much a question of finding the time as it is of making the time. Now I tend to be most creative uh in the evenings. So very often I'll find that uh after my wife and child have gone to bed, that's a good time for me to kind of come alive creatively and do my composing at that time. And uh usually it'll be maybe about an hour or so, but there have been a few times that I've noticed it started getting light outside, and that's not a good sign if you have rehearsal the next morning. So try not to do that too often. But I think the the character of my work can safely be described as post-romantic. But of course, I'm always trying to evolve the way that I'm uh writing, and I'm also influenced by either what I'm studying privately that week, or perhaps even what we're playing in the orchestra. If we're playing Ravel's Daphnis, then maybe there'll be some French colors that work their way into my my music, or if we're playing Mahler Five, then there might be some more uh expansive, sweeping, expressionist type lines. So it it somewhat depends.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Aaron Powell In that way it almost sounds like composing is a bit like processing and taking in your life and the music that you're looking at and thinking about and sort of a cathartic experience in that way.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Absolutely. And I'd say that it's very difficult to separate the artistic process from your life, and I don't think that we should. I think some of the greatest art that we have, certainly Mahler's symphonies, there's a real synthesis between Mahler the man and his music.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Now I'm curious how you, as a trumpeter, approach a new piece of music, like this double concerto by Carlos Simon. What is your process like when you're starting your preparation on an entirely new piece?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Well, when you're working on an entirely new piece that's never been played before, you don't have the luxury of listening to a recording in advance as we ordinarily would. So you have to start with the score. And that's always my starting place. And particularly as a composer myself, I always find that I learn something both in terms of how I'm going to prepare for the week with the orchestra, and in terms of why did the composer write what they wrote, and how can that inform me, both as a player and as a composer, in the future.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah. Now, Mahler's Fifth Symphony is such a landmark work for Trumpet. Can you share your first experience playing or hearing this piece and what really stayed with you about it?

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Well, of course, the first time I heard the symphony was the great recordings of the Chicago Symphony with Bud Hurseth playing trumpet, and they absolutely captured my imagination and is part of the reason that I wanted to stick with playing trumpet and wanted to play an orchestra. But the first time that I played the piece with an orchestra was actually my audition here for the St. Louis Symphony. And that was a very memorable moment because I remember coming out and the entire orchestra was on stage and I started to play, which of course sounded to me as it usually does. It starts trumpet alone, until you get to the cymbal crash and then this gigantic A major chord comes in. And I distinctly remember that sensation. I thought, oh, this is for real. This is the real thing now. And I was fortunate to win that audition and be offered the position, and now I get to play the rest of it with the orchestra. So that's a real high point for me.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

There are so many of those moments where the trumpet sort of seems to be leading the charge. So as you already mentioned, the symphony begins with this iconic trumpet solo, and there are all of these other significant trumpet excerpts in the symphony, but that opening solo is one of the most famous excerpts in the trumpet repertoire. Now that you've lived in this excerpt and this opening over and over again throughout your career, do you feel you've landed on your definitive version of it, or do you still see yourself changing things from time to time?

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Well, that's a terrific question. And I would be very hesitant to say that my interpretation will not continue to evolve and that I've developed my definitive version. Although I would say that certainly for this piece and anything that I play in the orchestra, I am 100% convinced of the interpretation that I'm bringing to the table for that week. But that also doesn't mean that it can't change, and there may be outside influences that cause that to change over time, maybe throughout the week, over the months, or even over the years or a lifetime. So we'll see where this goes. But right now, I am very confident in the interpretation that I've chosen and the way that I'm approaching it.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

I would imagine that psychology is a huge part of it. That your psychological dedication to your interpretation that you bring to the table is so paramount.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Absolutely. You have to believe what you're bringing to the table if you're going to convince others, I think.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Well, Mahler demands a lot from the full brass cohort in this work. And as principal trumpet, you play a big role in developing the cohesion of the brass section. How do you think about that role and how does it impact the way you play during big brass corrals, like, for example, at the end of the fifth movement of the symphony at the very end?

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Well, first off, I would say that I'm very lucky to have colleagues who are incredibly astute listeners and very receptive to ideas. So they actually make my job a lot easier on that front than otherwise it would be. I know that if I come in with a strong idea, that they'll just come right along with me and we can make something of that together. Um, as regarding the ending, Mahler is such an interesting example of how he uses the instrument in the opening of the piece. You have this C sharp minor declaration of despair and sorrow. And then the ending of the piece is up a step into D major, now in a major key. And the same instrument that Mahler used to create this sorrowful opening, he uses to express this amazing, joyful affirmation of life at the end of the piece. So certainly trying to capture that character is paramount on my mind. And as Principal Trumpet, it's my responsibility to take care of kind of all the nuts and bolts of how long are we going to hold the note, what kind of articulation are we going to use, how do we start it, all of those kinds of things. But it's also my responsibility to come in with an interpretation so that we can be unified. And then again, that may change throughout the week. So I think having an idea such as that is very important, and uh I'm excited to make it come to life.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah. Well, this Mahler Symphony is a long and emotionally intense piece. How do you pace yourself throughout the symphony while still maintaining your focus and your energy?

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Well, I'd say for me, it's important to come to the starting line as fresh as possible. So I will actually scale back a little bit on the amount of practicing that I would do on the day of a performance, for example, so that I'm uh I'm as fresh as I can be when it comes to start the symphony. And throughout the course of the work, I find that if I am musically engaged, even when I'm not playing, that keeps me in the music in a way that, you know, it doesn't feel like I have to start and stop throughout the piece. I'm just in it the entire way. So that, you know, when the trumpet comes in or the trauma comes in, whatever, it's all very natural. It's not as if we're trying to create something new. And it's it's almost as if my colleagues and and the music is just there's a feeling of being carried through the work. And then when you get to the the end of a an hour-long piece, to me, it very often feels like it's been maybe 10 minutes or 15 minutes because of that effect of being carried along in the music.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

And of course, you're so active, you're especially active in this piece. It's not like you have extreme lengths of time where you're counting and waiting and waiting. You know, he really makes use of the brass section.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Absolutely. Yeah, for trumpets, usually, you know, what we do, 80% uh of our time on stage is just waiting around, and then 20% is is sheer terror. But here you can actually maybe have turn down the waiting around and turn up the terror a little bit, uh, which is always fun.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

For better or for worse. Well, on another note, I think many of our listeners may not be familiar with the difference between the trumpets that you bring on stage. I remember once seeing you bring five trumpets on stage with you for one piece last season, an Ana Klein piece, even though your part doesn't usually specify more than one or two specific trumpets. Can you tell us a little bit about what those different instruments are and why you might select one over another for a given passage?

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Absolutely. So uh most of the time we're playing a C trumpet on stage. That's kind of our our usual bread and butter instrument. That's our main main instrument. But very often we'll use a D trumpet or an E flat trumpet or an F trumpet or a piccolo trumpet, and they lend a slightly different sound and also just different tendencies to the to the instruments. So it's kind of like finding a glove that fits perfectly. When you're playing a certain passage of a work, you may find that one trumpet just fits that passage a little bit better than another. And if you have that comfort, it gives you a bit more room to be able to spin a phrase the way that you want or or color and create a certain sound. There's a little bit more flexibility there rather than just maybe playing everything on the same instrument can work. But yeah, I like to find exactly the most refined instrument I can so that I can achieve the musical result that I want.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

So just to go through that for our listeners, when you talk about these different trumpets in different keys, you mean if you play a C with your fingers on a D trumpet, it sounds like the note D to a pianist or to someone who's looking at concert pitch, we call it. So you really can access all of those notes using any of those instruments, but you might select one of them because it's more amenable to the shape of a passage, the contour or the tessatura. That is exactly correct. Just as a random example, I'm curious. If you have an F trumpet, how would you describe that instrument's tone versus the standard trumpet that you often play on the C trumpet?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

The F trumpet will have a little bit of a lighter sound to it. So there's a little more of a shine and a shimmer in the sound. It's not quite as thick, it's not as wide. Although I have a bell made by a former colleague here, Tom Drake, who uh found a way to have a bell made that actually sounds rather like a sea trumpet. So I can kind of fool people sometimes too by the instrument that I'm playing. It may not necessarily sound like the actual pitched instrument that it is. Sometimes we have little magic tricks that we do.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

But in terms of your ombuds and the traversal through the passage and the fingers, it might still be easier to use the other instrument, even if you're trying to make the sound approximate a sea trumpet or whatever else.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Absolutely. And often it has to do with intonation as well. Every trumpet has its own, we'll just call it bad notes on the instrument that aren't as don't speak as well or don't speak as well in tune. And so sometimes picking up a different instrument, you can float and get a certain note to be the color you want in tune without having to deal with working with maybe around one of those notes that doesn't want to speak in that register quite so well.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

And last thing I'll say, just to really brag on you and all trumpeters, when you change those instruments, that means you have to transpose on site your part. So you if you have a part written in C and you pick up an instrument that's not in C in order to achieve more facility or the tone that you want for that passage, and you start to play that passage, you have to imagine different notes than what's printed on the page in order to get your fingers to execute the passage, which is such a mind-boggling process for someone who isn't in that world. How do you develop that skill?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Well, it's something you develop over the course of many years of practice, of course. We're used to looking at parts that are in B flat, in A, in D, and playing them all on a C trumpet. Yeah. So for us, the the key that we're looking at and the instrument that we pick up, we're so used to dealing in these terms that it doesn't really matter. It's almost like flipping a switch in your mind. And then, okay, now I'm ready to go in that key. Sometimes actually I'll find myself, if I'm playing a part that's in C, my mind will put tricks on me and I'll want to start transposing it. I'm so used to doing that. But if it's actually in C, then I can I can let it alone and just play.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

But I just have to play what's written? What? Yeah, must be a strange feeling. Well, Steven, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us today. It's been a pleasure talking with you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And to our listeners, thank you as always for joining us for this episode of Noted. We'll be back with another episode very soon, so stay tuned. And I'll see you at Powell Hall.