Richard Wagner can hardly be called a light composer, and Gustav Mahler is certainly about as weighty a symphonist as it is possible to find. The combination of the works of these two men into this week's concerts by the Boston Symphony is therefore somewhat ever-powering.

The former is to be represented by excerpts from "Die Walkure" and "Die Meistersinger" which includes Wotan's Farewell with the ensuing Fire Music, the Ride of the Valkyries, and the Introduction to the Third Act of "Die Meistersinger." Mahler's Fifth Symphony, only surpassed in size and gargantuan qualities by his Eighth Symphony, is also to be performed. It was composed in the years 1901-02, and has three divisions which are subdivided into five movements. It is hoped that the followers of these two composers will attend the concerts en masse and then hold their peace for the rest of the season.

The program for the concerts next Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon by the Boston Symphony consists of Haydn's Symphony in G major, No. 88, Prokofieff's suite, "Licutenant Kije," and Sibelius's Second Symphony.

Wagnerian Singers

An unusual group of artists have recently formed an organization called the Wagnerian Singers and are at present engaged in touring the country. They will come to Symphony Hall on Sunday afternoon with a program containing six Wagner selections and numbers by Mozart, Strauss, Weber, Gounod, and Offenbach. Richard Hageman is the conductor of the group which includes the wellknown basso, Alexander Kipnis.

State Symphony Program

Tchaikovsky's Third Symphony will be the featured selection of the State Symphony Orchestra's concert in Sanders Theater Sunday evening.

One of the composer's least known works, it has not been performed by the Boston Symphony since 1900, and by the Chicago Symphony, not at all. Last January the New York Philharmonic Orchestra did give it a hearing, but only after a silence of 58 years.

Yet on its first performance in St. Petersburg in 1876, Cesar Cui reported that "the composer was enthusiastically recalled"; and Laroche, better pleased, wrote: "The importance and power of the music, the beauty and variety of form, the nobility of style, the originality and rare perfection of technique, all contribute to make this symphony one of the most remarkable works produced during the last ten years."

In 1878 Hans Richter, the Bayreuth conductor, wished to do the composition at the Philharmonic concert in Vienna, but, after one rehearsal, the Philharmonic directors pronounced the work "too Russian," and it was unanimously rejected.

Whatever its intrinsic value, this symphony is as important a milestone in Tchaikovsky's development as is Richard II in Shakespeare's evolution.

Alexander Thiede will conduct.