your least-favorite Mahler symphony?

[Polarius T]

I'll join the fray:

Least favorite on philosophical and moral grounds (leave it alone!): 10th

Least favorite on aesthetic grounds (least to my "liking" as rather oppressive): 6th

Least favorite on practical grounds (can seldom muster or afford the spiritual energy and physical powers required for listening it through): 8th

PT

[sbugala]

Even great maestros and friends of Mahler had favorite symphonies.

Klemperer didn't conduct 1st,3nd, 5th, 8th, 10th(adagio) and I think had conducted M6 only once and decleared the work  completelly failure.( More exactly I think he refes to the finale )
Walter didn't make M3,,M6,M7,M8,M10.
We all know that Karajan and Giulini conducted only a handfull.
I consider this fact a very healthy sign. Althought it's the same language, the same world, there are diffrerent neccesities for each work.I beleive to  a trully artisic instict of each performer and not to a fashion which wants complete cycles.That said, there are a lot of complete cycles by trully dedicated Mahlerians which are excellent.
Everyone to his likes and dislikes, both artists and musiclovers.

According to the Robin Gollding's program notes to the GROC version of Klemperer's classic Philharmonia account of the Resurrection Symphony, he performed the 1st Symphony once and "never got around to doing No. 6." This stirred a memory of reading a passage about Klemperer in a book on conductors where he seemed to be enthusiastic about the Sixth, but acknowledged he probably couldn't undertake it at this time.  Using Google Book Search, I found a bio about Klemperer called Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times where despite his ambivalence about the Sixth, he still considered programming it in 1969 before abandoning the idea.  Weird, wild stuff. Check it out: http://books.google.com/books?id=WVTSGoGfmuMC&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=klemperer+cosmos+mahler&source=web&ots=qjX22Is1Ek&sig=va8UtK5oqsj2KvktH3fyIaUmx0s&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result

[john haueisen]

I think Polarius has nailed the problem that many of us have with M8:
 that we
"can seldom muster or afford the spiritual energy and physical powers required for listening it through."

It's one of those pieces that I hope that I can better understand and appreciate after continued growth and experience.  So far, it has required more of me than I've been able to give it.
JH

[sbugala]

The M8 is a weird bird, that's for sure.  I love the closing minutes of the first movement, but I'm not as thrilled with the rest of the movement.  However, sometimes, I wonder if the M8 second movement is the greatest he ever wrote. I especially find the first ten minutes or so to be incredible.  And Mahler, who gets dismissed for being so over the top, is very much in a "less is more" mode here. 

Regards,
Steven

[Polarius T]

...a bio about Klemperer called Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times...

That, by the way, is a very good Klemperer biography (by Peter Heyworth), although rather difficult to find these days, especially the volume 2 (post-1933).

For the percussionists in our midst: even if he never conducted it himself, Klemperer did get to play a part in a performance of M3 under the Mahler's own wand (the offstage side-drum: see Martin Anderson, ed., Klemperer on Music: Shavings from a Musician's Workbench, with preface by Pierre Boulez; Toccata Press 1988, p. 135).

(That's another book of interest for Mahlerians.)

(In which Klemperer also declares that the work that converted him into a true Mahlerite was actually M8: "To be frank, it was not until [hearing Mahler rehearse it in Munich in 1910] that I understood Mahler's music well enough to realise what a great composer he was" (op. cit., p. 139).

PT

[Leo K]

Polarius T, thanks for you references to Klemp and the M3...fascinating.


By the way, I'm slowly appreciating the M8 much more than I used to...it took Inbal, Rattle, and Boulez to really show me the light, so to speak. 

I think Solti's classic recording turned me off from the work for years...it ruined the M8 for me!

--Todd

[Amphissa]

I found that I can like M8 if I skip the entire Part I. 
 

[john haueisen]

Hey, look everyone--Amphissa has just joined the ranks as a Full Member!

[Amphissa]

I've been hanging around the Mahler discussion board since the "old days" on the previous site. By now, I should have received the Old Timer Medal.   


 

[Polarius T]

Sbugala, Todd, Amphissa & John: I've started to feel a little like you guys: the 8th is a tough nut to crack and a particular performance of it (like Solti's, my gawd!*) can totally spoil it for you almost for good. I still feel like the 1st movement may be something like a magnificent failure, and I find the 2nd part much, much more interesting. Perhaps it's this type of efforts to resuscitate what is basically an already dead form (from Catholicism in this case; though of course this is not so much about the musical form per se but about a score that tries to accommodate a dead text belonging to a world the music has already left behind) that proves so precarious.

John: Amphissa's also got street cred from other music fora where I've enjoyed his input for long, so show da man some respect! 

PT

*I always feel like, if in his performances Bernstein always tried to sensationalize what he was working on, Solti was into making a scandal out of it. What actually made me first tune in to this music was Kubelik (on Audite), but that may have been because of the singers he used who really can characterize any work (Fischer-Dieskau, Edith Mathis, Julia Hamari, Franz Crass...). Moreover all the sound elements are nicely integrated and the recording has spaciousness to it at a scale it really needs to breathe. In fact, this achievement was rather surprising to me given that I've never particularly cared for anythying Kubelik has done; his conducting can be very competent yet kind of pedestrian in overall conception, leaving you feeling almost fully nonchalant about the results. Currently I'm working my way through this work under Boulez' guidance like you, Todd.

[john haueisen]

Amphissa's street cred from other music fora respectfully acknowledged and appreciated!
JH

[Toblacher]

Some great parts, but for the life of me I can't understand how this can be some high on anyone's list.  The ending is disappointing, neither bombastic (like the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 8th), nor a beautiful fade-out (like the 4th and 9th).  That said, Mahler is like sex, even when it's bad, it's good.

[Amphissa]

That said, Mahler is like sex, even when it's bad, it's good.

HAHAHA!!!  Wear those rose-tinted glasses as long as you can, my friend.

"There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex." - Billy Joel

"Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand." - Woody Allen

"Stick with the prime cuts. You may go hungry once in awhile, but you never confuse bull testicles for tenderloin." - Amphissa

In other words, every composer has a Cinderella or two in his family. Life is too short to waste time on the ugly stepsisters. Date the Cinderellas of a lot of different composers instead. Because, as Somerset Maugham so wisely counseled,

"You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct."

 
 
 

[john haueisen]

Purely my personal opinion today, but M6 is one of my absolute favorites.
Why?

Again, you'll see how subjective this is, and how much many will think I am reading into it, but to me, M6 contains some of Mahler's most poignant struggles:  clinging to his love of life (Alma theme) struggling against mortality, soaring to the heavens, clinging again to pastoral scenes and love and life, finally all of this crushed and annihilated by the inexorable blows of mortality.

OK.  Jump on me with ridicule.  I warned you it was just my own subjective impression of M6.
  I know--it's just musical notes, vibrations on the eardrums.  But to me at least, it's so much more.
John H

[Amphissa]

You will not find many to disagree with you here. Most of our brethren on the board love the 6th. I'm the aberration, not you.