People sometimes laugh when I tell them how I ever came to Classical Music in general. It must have been in the early 1990s, I was about 12 or 13, and was a Synthesizer nut. Jarre's
Oxygene and
Equinoxe represented, as it were, my musical world (and I can still recommend every board member here to immerse yourself in those compositions, especially Equinoxe, kind of Jarre's
Nachtmusik).
But I also enjoyed other Synthesizer music. So I came across Arcade's Synthesizer Greatest series, which I believe originally came from the Netherlands, but was also available in the States. As a part of that series, two volumes were dedicated to Synthesized versions of Classical Music pieces. OK, many representations were quite.... corny. But I enjoyed the music, and it made me extremely curious about how they sounded when played by real strings, real brass, real woodwinds, real percussion! The rest, as they say, is history (
)
Mahler entered my life when I was about 14. And what an entry it would be. Before that, I was always somewhat intimidated by the sheer length of his symphonies as seen on the back of the CD's. You must take note, that before that, the longest symphony I ever sat through was Haydn's Philosopher (still a great gem) or Mozart's Haffner (another great gem). And a lot of people told me Mahler's music was very severe, some even called it depressing!
But as I always was a very inquisitive person, and was curious if Mahler was really that severe and depressing, I took the plunge.
Because of the daunting challenge which Mahler appeared to me at that time, I decided to start with the shortest. You guessed it:
The Fourth. I can remember it as if it were yesterday, and picked the DG Galleria reissue of
Karajan/Mathis/BPO. I had
no idea who Herbert von Karajan was, neither was I interested in the orchestra, Mathis, or the CD label. In that period of my life, I bought Classical Music just because of the title of the music which appeared on the CD cover, and the price range was certainly a deciding factor
The Karajan 4th was available at that time, at that precise moment in the shop... and on sale
OK, enough embarrassment
Because I don't think there could have been a better recording to start with at that time.
The first time I listened to the CD, it was
very hard for me to connect to the music, because it basically sounded, at least at the beginning, as some kind of Mozart - what the heck, do I really hear sleigh bells? Is this Christmas? - but the music was much,
very much heavier than any Classical Music I heard before. It wasn't because I didn't connect to the melodies! It was the much thicker sounding orchestra, those constant increases and decreases in volume, the changes of mood taking place in a single movement which I simply did not hear in Mozart, Haydn, you name it...
It was hard. Especially when the innocence of the start of the first movement transformed into the middle section, where two huge climaxes appeared. Phew! That's over! My ears begged for the return of the more softer, easy going first minutes of this movement. It was too much drama to me at that time!
Same holds true of my reaction to the Ruhevoll movement. What a beautiful, serene melody. But then the music increased volume again. It was rather unsettling, again not because of the melody, but the sheer weight of it. You can only imagine my shock when the climax appeared. It was like a bomb exploding in our back yard (but to be frank, Haydn's Surprise also caught me by.... surprise). I was more shocked than pleased with what I heard. It was, to be frank, 'uneasy listening' for me at that time, and I felt truly sorry for my eardrums, which weren't accustomed to this kind of sound!
The Finale was probably the biggest challenge to sit through. I had never listened to any form of Classical Music in which the human voice took part, and it took me quite some time to come to terms with it.
But when all is said and done.... I listened to it again. And again. And again. And again. And one day, I felt the click. The things I hated about it a couple of days before actually where the things I started to love, and love dearly. Five days after purchasing the CD, I was actually whistling the themes from the Fourth in the shower. Now, is there any greater tribute a music lover can pay to a composer...?
So my introduction to Mahler was his Fourth, when I was 14, and for very sentimental reasons the Karajan/Mathis/BPO production ranks highly in my collection, even to this day. And it's a great performance, with rich and warm sound! Yes, very Karajanesque, that's for sure, but it works splendidly in that work, even more so in his great recording of the Fifth, which a lot of people sneer at just because it's conducted by Karajan. Which, by the way, is conducted
magnificently by Karajan!
Then came the First, the Fifth, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, and all the rest...... The start of a never ending love affair. As Edith Piaf would put it, 'Non, je ne regrette rien'.
Topic: When, and how were you introduced to the music of Gustav Mahler? (Read 6418 times)