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General Category => Gustav Mahler and Related Discussions => Topic started by: Polarius T on August 26, 2008, 03:55:14 PM
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Apologies if this has already been a topic (no time for searches right now), but StillIvor just made me remember a turning point in my own musical past -- hearing the recording that single-handedly and definitively and permanently converted me to Mahler's music, which was Horenstein's M4 with Margaret Price on Classics for Pleasure. Up to then I had always come out frustrated, feeling oppressed and sad and not understanding the nature of the music at all, based on what I knew of it and expected of it, too. After Horenstein nothing was the same, though further frustrations and another prolonged sense of unfulfilment was sure enough to arise in due time again (only to be relieved in recent years through my exposure to Abbado and his Mahler conducting), as knowledge and familiarity increased. But Horenstein at that point offered something very luminous and liberated (in the sense of the work's seeming to live on and evolve without a human conductor's hand pressing it on) that really opened my ears, Margaret Price's pure voice only completing this almost otherworldly sensation.
So I'm a little piqued as to whether others might have in their past one particular recording or a concert experience that "converted" them to Mahler in a similar fashion.
-PT
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I became a Mahlerite in stages...the recording that first amazed me was the Kaplan/LSO M2 (first one on MCA) which I heard in 1989...a year or two after that I tried these all important recordings that have influenced me ever since:
M9 Abbado/VPO
M6 Karajan/BPO
Most of Lenny's DGG Mahler cycle
Then I left Mahler for quite a few years...the recordings that enlightned me, and drove me back to collecting in 2005 were:
M9 Karajan/BPO (live version on DG)
Das Lied von der Erde with Boulez/VPO/DG
It has been one of the best journeys of my life.
--Todd
P.S. I wholeheartly share your enthusiam for Abbado's Mahler...he is the conductor that along with Bertini and Zinman, has suprised me the most.
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The first Mahler I heard, and it grabbed me, was the last 3 movements of M7. What stayed with me most was the big fat brass tune after the timp. solo opening in the finale.
What really got to me was M6 under F.Charles Adler in a UK superbargain reissue by Delta in the early 60s. The first symphony that hit the bull's-eye. From then I was a Mahlerite
Swftly followed by M5 under Walter and m1 under Leindorf/Boston band.
Mahler has remained top of my premiership ever since.
And there so much music by composer other than Mahler that I love, too. And I don't think ill of anyone who has anyone else top of their favourites.
Ivor
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When I entered college to study engineering, my younger sister, then a high school oboist, said I should investigate Mahler's music. I play the French horn, and she said Mahler had great parts for the horns. So I went to the university’s stacks in the recordings library, pulled down some Mahler LPs at random, listened to some tracks at random, and concluded that if someone was despondent, Mahler’s music would push that person over the edge! And there I left the matter until I returned home at Thanksgiving. My sister had the DG recording of Giulini’s M9 with the CSO (I think it had a Gran Prix du Disc label on it). I listened with headphones to the recording twice though in one sitting. I was totally engrossed and have been an admirer of Mahler’s music for three decades since that afternoon.
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As a native of Central Illinois, I got to hear Solti and Chicago do M7 live in about 1971-2. One of my first concerts, I was 14-15 and completely blown away by the music and the sound. I got the recording of the work they made around the same time. I think the tour was in conjunction with the recording to be made in Urbana, Il. Anyway... that made me a Mahlerian for life.
My discovery of the 10th in the Ormandy recording in our public library soon after was the icing on the cake.
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A friend lent me Klemperer's studio M2 which I didn't get at all.
I then listened to my father's cassette of Karajan's M6 which I really liked, and so I bought an early CD of Haitink's 1971 M5 which I still think is pretty good - not the most thrilling but with a classical sense of restraint which I like.
I headed off to a record store to get Haitink's M9 (when it was a full price CD set, not a Duo!) but they only had the live Karajan so I got that.
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Way back in college, in the 1960s, during the LP era, for the princely sum of one dollar I got a Crossroads Records recording of Mahler's Titan. That first made me aware of Mahler as a composer.
But what made me a Mahlerite was hearing Ozawa's M2. When I heard "the Wave" sound of the timpani, I just knew that this was no ordinary music; no ordinary composer. This was far more than Taffelmusik or elevator music or transitory pop music--this was something very special. That conclusion has remained valid for me.
John H
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I just realized there was an entire thread almost like this about a year+ ago, so let me rephrase the question to change the angle a bit. But first a couple of quick comments:
- Todd: Intriguing this longer pause you had between two intensive periods of listening and collecting; what initiated or caused it, if I may ask? I think for most others it seems the obsession has been largely uninterrupted. And I still want to post separately on Boulez "Lied" which I find more and more revelatory with every listening. Wish Abbado had/would still record it; he says he's mostly into the "Abschied" and "Einsame im Herbst" with the rest of it not speaking to him that personally.
- Ivor: you are a walking encyclopedia of modern Mahler performance. (I recall you also attended some of Klemperer's M performances which is sthg still today I'd have on top of my wish list.) (I'm a big Klemp fan.) (DH may take notice.)
- Russ: I find it always so interesting how players get into and hear the kind of music I love (my own background is in the piano but not as an orchestral instrument). (And the Giulini recording makes sense: it's really appealing and not for nothing garnered just about every industry award available at the time.)
- Don: Ditto with Solti live...some ear-opener, must have been; as is indeed CSO anytime, for that matter: guaranteed to make an impact if anything! (Of the U.S. orchestras -- though there are so many really excellent ones -- I like their sound the best btw.) Lucky to have such auspicious beginnings.
- Akiralx: Another interesting thing is that to what I hear around it seems that for most or at least really many it was M6 that first caught them off guard and made them see the light... For me maybe the opposite -- this was possibly the hardest nut to crack.
Now, if I should rephrase the point of interest: What did you have to hear to be able to become a Mahlerite?
For me the answer is fairly straightforward: Like with most things in life, I proceeded to Mahler in wrong order, starting from contemporary music and descending downward on the evolutionary ladder, so to speak; and I think without previous familiarity with three composers phylogenetically following (or preceding, from my reverse angle) Mahler, I would not have been prepared for the revelation M was in the same way at all (that this was no ordinary music, no ordinary composer, as was your sudden but lasting realization, too, John):
Messiaen
Schoenberg
Zemlinsky
Zemlinsky and Schoenberg are of course rather obviously related (has anyone ever initiated a thread on the former's Lyric Symphony btw? If not, someone should), but what in Messiaen finds a kind of counterpart to M is the usage of huge, often descending blocks of sounds and awkward rhythmic patterns; reliance on thematic, rhythmic, and other material classifiable as juvenile and vulgar; greater physical diversification and spread of the orchestra and utilization of spatial effects; use of nonstandard instruments; the obvious challenges of organizing large disparate bodies of music into a coherent whole; and the intentionally naive disposition surfacing on occasion -- one could probably go on.
-pt
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Having listened to Jazz for years and years I found that was gradually growing tired of it and with very little new music writing for Jazz orchestras - my hero, Duke Ellington is dead a long, long time - I started foraging through Classical music recordings looking for something to stimulate me. I bought dozens of Stravinsky CDs and loved some more than others. A friend of mine suggested the music of Gustav Mahler to me but warned me that it is "very heavy" music so I mightn't like it. Duly warned I went out and bought a copy of Mahler's Fifth Symphony by Tennstedt and came to the conclusion that he was right, I didn't like Mahler at all.
Late last year I came across a copy of Abbado/BPO M6 recording on sale for €8 so I bought it and I liked it. A few days later I came across the von Karajan/BPO M5 for €7, so I bought it. Well on first hearing it the von Karajan recording really grabbed me, I was hugely impressed. I couldn't believe the range of tone colours that I was hearing. These orchestrations were something I had never heard before, I never realised it was possible either. My interest in Classical music took on a whole new meaning. I am glad that even though it is thirty later than it should have been that - thanks to HvK and Claudio Abbado - I was introduced to the beautiful world of Gustav Mahler. Mahler is now an obsession of mine so my quest continues.
It's good to be able to share this with people who don't think I'm nuts! ;D
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One of my first concerts, I was 14-15 and completely blown away by the music and the sound. I got the recording of the work they made around the same time.
Fifteen? Oh you lucky man Don, I envy you. Ah well I was enchanted by Duke Ellington at that stage of my life!
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Given the revised question, I think I needed only two things.
First, my weakness for tunes, satisfied by that M7 finale opening.
Second, my preparedness in my early listening days to listen to anything and everything.
Oh, thirdly [ :-) ], having no preconceptions about what to enjoy.
Ivor: you are a walking encyclopedia of modern Mahler performance. (I recall you also attended some of Klemperer's M performances which is sthg still today I'd have on top of my wish list.) (I'm a big Klemp fan.) (DH may take notice.)
You're very kind. Alas, I just went to quite a lot of Mahler concerts 64 - 72 or so, when there were big names in London. Then a long gap, then very intermittent visits from my Norwich, Norfolk base.
"Walking encyclopedia"? I wish. [I just now how to make much out of little .]
Ivor
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Oh that works like that. I see.
Ivor
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I just realized a typo in my response, it was M7 not M& as I typed. :-\
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One of my first concerts, I was 14-15 and completely blown away by the music and the sound. I got the recording of the work they made around the same time.
Fifteen? Oh you lucky man Don, I envy you. Ah well I was enchanted by Duke Ellington at that stage of my life!
The opening tympani figure of the 4th movement of the 7th still gives me chills!
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I became a Mahlerite in stages...the recording that first amazed me was the Kaplan/LSO M2 (first one on MCA) which I heard in 1989...a year or two after that I tried these all important recordings that have influenced me ever since:
M9 Abbado/VPO
M6 Karajan/BPO
Most of Lenny's DGG Mahler cycle
Abbado/VPO/DG M9th....an interesting trigger to make anybody a Mahler devotee. Yes, this was one of few first digital recordings I bought back in mid 80's and I was hooked on it for a while. The sound was amazingly spectacular with every instrument clearly audible (it was a very close-up recording). It still is.
John,
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Soon after I discovered M2, I began very deliberately, to seek out all the other Mahler symphonies.
After M1 and M2, though not for chronological reasons, I came to appreciate M3.
To this day M3 is my "lost on a desert island" favorite, because as Mahler himself suggested, it seems a symphony that contains the entire universe. Yes, going with the program, I appreciate the history of life: evolution, plants, animals, man, angels, and what heaven tells me, but I also like the encapsulation in the posthorn serenade, of a nostalgia for a departed friend. I am so appreciative that Mahler combined music with words, to thus produce works of art that transcend the limitations of music or language alone. And you notice that Mahler turned to diverse instruments and sound-producing devices, as well as diverse word subjects, to better give voices to his message.
JH
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Mahler 2 with Stokowski on RCA--read a NY Time review, bought it, and was blown away. Then I realized later how fast and loose he was playing with the score, but I still love bits of it. Then Mahler 1 and 3 with Horenstein. No. 1 has held up pretty well, No. 3 now strikes me as very stiff and approximate, and both have missing timpani parts in their first movements (go figure)--but it was these differences, back when I was 11 or 12, that let me to start comparing recordings and checking out scores to see what the composer wrote as compared to what the performers were doing. That was a real eye-opener!
Dave H
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Following is what I wrote in the old thread about discovering Mahler:
"I cannot say that, upon hearing a Mahler work for the first time, I was immediately hooked on Mahler. For me, Mahler was an acquired taste, and it took some time for me to get accustomed to his music.
I first heard Mahler in the mid 70's when I bought Bruno Walter's Columbia Odyssey recording of the 9th. I read the liner notes, and found Mahler's story touching, and the music poignant. However, I did not pursue any of the other symphonies.
In college a year later, one of my roommates was heavily into Mahler, and had most of the Haitink recordings. I could not get interested in them. I found the "Brüder Martin" march in Symphony No.1 to be ridiculous (though I liked the first movement). I found it odd that there was singing in so many of the symphonies, and some of the symphonies seemed too long. I was particularly bothered by the fact that the first movement of No. 3 had to be split to two LP sides! However, I later heard the early Columbia Bernstein recording of the 3rd on the radio one day during a long drive, and I found the symphony fascinating. So, gradually, I began to acquire a taste for the rest of Mahler. His polyphony had always sounded like cacophony to me, but eventually my ear began to appreciate all those sounds playing at the same time.
Eventually, I had another roommate who was also into classical music, who hated Mahler. His objections were much like mine had been. Eventually, something clicked for him as well, and another Mahler proselyte was born.
Just remember that when you play a Mahler symphony for some people, they may react negatively, but will hopefully warm to his music over time. When my wife and I were married almost 20 years ago, she had never heard much Mahler, but over time has become quite a fan. There are still a couple of symphonies she does not know terribly well, but now that her ear "gets" Mahler, she is usually open to all his music."
I would add that I responded positively to the 9th right away, because it seemed more "normal" as a symphony to me. The others seemed strange (more than 4 movements, singing, excessive length, etc), and took some time before they clicked with me. I eventually came to love all the symphonies with the exception of the 8th.
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Another thing to bear in mind (very briefly) is that there are orchestral musicians who have to play Mahler but aren't Mahlerites.
Might be amusing to discover which composer is disliked by the highest proportion of an orchestra.
Ivor
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One of my first concerts, I was 14-15 and completely blown away by the music and the sound. I got the recording of the work they made around the same time.
Fifteen? Oh you lucky man Don, I envy you. Ah well I was enchanted by Duke Ellington at that stage of my life!
Not too bad yourself, I'd say. At that point I was largely hooked on Ten Years After and Colosseum (for those who know them) (and I might even be predating that by a year or two), and only a couple of years ago arrived at Ellington, appreciating him that much more for it.
-PT
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Abbado/VPO/DG M9th....an interesting trigger to make anybody a Mahler devotee. Yes, this was one of few first digital recordings I bought back in mid 80's and I was hooked on it for a while. The sound was amazingly spectacular with every instrument clearly audible (it was a very close-up recording). It still is.
What I was instantly floored by in that set was actually his stupendously beautiful M10 Adagio, and only later got to understand the multiple finesses of the M9 following it. It's a very impressive performance but even if I continue vacillating to this day I now esteem the later, somewhat more restrained BPO take even higher.
-PT
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Nice and interesting responses.
Apropos John: I think if I had to spend the rest of my life listening to just one work over and over again (a little bit like the governor of the penal colony in Bioy-Casares' "Plan for Escape," who through neurosurgical means succeeded in transmutating his pain sensations into auditory sensations so that instead of experiencing pain, he would now forever hear the beginning of the first movement of Brahms IV...), it might be M3. It's so rich and large and inexhaustible in every way; just getting to know it completely could be a life's work. But I think it would have to be a live performance; I find it difficult to really reproduce this huge work in my living room.
Dave H: That Horenstein again... What seems clear at the very least is that he was someone with an uncanny ability to communicate (warts and all). (But then you'd have to believe there is something to communicate in music, too.)
Damfino: Your testimony too seems to speak for the ability of Mahler's music to live a "subterranean" life: take root unawares and surface later on, as an active interest and appreciation. That seems to happen quite often. (Actually, to me, too, in a way, but that's another story.) Your note on M9 is interesting: for me this is the most "extraordinary" or "different" one among M's works.
Ivor: I don't know, but basically all musicians I know pretty much prefer the standard fare: it's easy to play while letting you rehearse your whole repertory of conservatory skills to the max and get a bit of a sense of "blowing away" with the volume too. So, Tchaik and Sib and so forth is what they seem to like. (Brahms is too "dry" for them.) Not sure about Mahler here, or about Mahler appreciation across the different sections. I think professional orchestral musicians are a bit lazy and lackadaisiacal and very workmanlike as a lot. My sample is small and very likely unrepresentative though.
-PT
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"What did you have to hear to become a Mahlerite?"
M10 Adagio. But then I heard M6 and was cured. :-X
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Oh Amphissa, now I understand why you never have much good to say about M6.
I know what it is: the marches.
Amphissa, you must just prefer to take things more slowly; hence the M10 Adagio.
I can certainly understand it--that M10 adagio is quite beautiful, and for me it puts the icing on the cake for Mahler's love affair with life.
John H
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The fall I entered college, I really gravitated towards classical music. Typically, I'd thumb through a library's compact discs or LP's. At my college's library, I stumbled upon some Mahler, specifically the Mahler Symphony No. 2. I was intrigued that the library had two versions: Solti's LSO account, and Slatkin's SLSO account. By co-incidence, I also checked out Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which in one episode uses part of the last movement. The rest is history...