Doing a multi-year Mahler cycle is a considerable undertaking for any orchestra. And for a smaller, regional group it’s huge. But Allan Scott likes Mahler and likes to think big. So for the last seven years he and the Helena (Mont.) Symphony, of which he is music director, have been working their way through all of the Austrian composer’s nine completed symphonies.

Allan Scott

This Saturday the cycle will conclude with the massive Eighth, the so called Symphony of a Thousand. “We won’t have quite that many people onstage,” Scott told Reichel Recommends. “It’ll be around 430.” That’s still a lot of performers. “We play in the Helena Civic Center. It’s the largest concert hall in the state and it will just accommodate everyone.”

Why did Scott, who has been the music director in Helena since 2003, want to do a giant project like this? “I love Mahler, and I do his music wherever I go,” whether as a guest conductor around the country or as music director of his other orchestra, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Symphony.

Scott didn’t follow a chronological order in programming the symphonies because he wanted to end the cycle with the Eighth, a work he says that takes the listener on “a musical journey.” And even though Mahler thought of his music “in existential terms, the message in the Eighth is simple.” Instead of movements, the symphony is in two parts. “The first deals with divine enlightenment,” Scott said. “The second is a setting of the final section of Goethe’s Faust. In Goethe’s version Faust is saved by the love of other people. And having these two apparently different ideals  shows that Mahler was thinking in terms of love and ‘god’ being interchangeable.”

Joining Scott and the Helena Symphony and Chorale for the May 12 performance are two local choral groups, the Salt Lake Children’s Choir and the Choral Arts Society of Utah.

Scott consciously looked for choirs outside of Montana. “Except for the Helena Symphony Chorale I wanted groups that weren’t associated with the symphony because I wanted to broaden the scope of this project,” he said, adding that he spent two years scouting possible candidates.

Ralph Woodward

Ralph Woodward, founder and director of the Salt Lake Children’s Choir, said that his young singers are excited about doing this. “They love it. They love everything about it – the power of the score and rehearsing their part with a recording.”

The kids just finished their annual spring concert and Woodward said they’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of music they’ve had to learn. “Their maxed out in terms of repertoire, but their energized.”

Woodward and his choir have had previous experience with Mahler’s Eighth. They took part in the Tanner Gift of Music performance in the Salt Lake Tabernacle with the Utah Symphony and Mormon Tabernacle Choir under the Utah Symphony’s then music director Keith Lockhart. “I’m happy to be revisiting the score with a bunch of new kids,” Woodward said.

The members of the Choral Arts Society of Utah are also thrilled to be part of this concert, said founder and director Sterling Poulson. “I like challenging them, and although this is very demanding, it gives them the opportunity to do something different and not become complacent.”

Sterling Poulson

Poulson said the singers were eager to work on Mahler’s Eighth. “They rallied around it, and learning it has elevated us to a level not achieved before.” It took the choir three months to learn, he said, and for the past several weeks they’ve been tweaking it. “It’s been an amazing experience for us.”

Also taking part in the concert is the Camerata Singers, under Scott Anderson, from Pocatello, Idaho, and soloists Diana McVey, Kristin K. Vogel and Heather Barnes, soprano; Kimberly Gratland James, mezzo-soprano; Rebekah Ambrosini, contralto; Kirk Dougherty, tenor; Constantinos Yiannoudes, baritone; and Douglas Nagel, bass.

There will only be one performance, and the concert is almost sold out. “This will be an emotional, intellectual and spiritual journey,” Scott said. “It will show what music can do to our lives and how it can enrich us.”

For more information about the concert log on to helenasymphony.org.