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
