Gustav Mahler
"Imagine the universe beginning to sing and resound," Mahler wrote of his Symphony No. 8, the "Symphony of a Thousand." "It is no longer human voices; it is planets and suns revolving." Mahler was late Romantic music's ultimate big thinker. In his own lifetime he was generally regarded as a conductor who composed on the side, producing huge, bizarre symphonies accepted only by a cult following.
Born in 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia, he came from a middle-class family. He entered the Vienna Conservatory in 1875, studying piano, harmony, and composition in a musically conservative atmosphere. Nevertheless, he became a supporter of Wagner and Bruckner, both of whose works he would later conduct frequently, and became part of a social circle interested in socialism, Nietzschean philosophy, and pan-Germanism. Around 1880, he began conducting and wrote his first mature work, Das klagende Lied. Mahler's conducting career advanced rapidly, moving him from Kassel to Prague to Leipzig to Budapest; he was usually either greatly respected or thoroughly despised by the performers for his exacting rehearsals and perfectionism. In 1897 he became music director of the Vienna Court Opera and then, a year later, of the Vienna Philharmonic. Mahler's conducting career permitted composition only during the summers, in a series of "composing huts" he had built in picturesque rural locations. He reserved this time for symphonies, all of them large-scale works, and song cycles. He completed his first symphony in 1888, but it met with utter audience incomprehension. In Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), he merged the two forms into an immense song-symphony. The Viennese public largely failed to understand his music, but Mahler took their reactions calmly, accurately predicting that "My time will yet come." Meanwhile, his autocratic ways as a conductor alienated musicians. In 1901, the press and the musicians essentially forced his resignation from the Philharmonic. He married a young composition student, Alma Schindler in 1902, and they soon had two daughters. By 1907 Mahler was increasingly away from Vienna, conducting his own works, and thus he resigned from the opera as well. Just after accepting the position of principal conductor of New York's Metropolitan Opera, but before leaving Vienna, Mahler's older daughter, age four, died from scarlet fever and diphtheria, and he learned he himself had a defective heart valve. In New York, he was impressed by the caliber of talent and quickly gained audience approval. In 1909 he became conductor of the New York Philharmonic, which he found much more agreeable than opera work by this time. The following year, he had a triumphant premiere of his massive Symphony No. 8 in Munich. Despite the professional successes, his personal life suffered another blow when his and Alma's marriage began to deteriorate. They stayed together, and after he became ill in February 1911, she saw to it that he made it back to Vienna, where he died on May 18.
The conductors Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Willem Mengelberg, and Maurice Abravanel kept Mahler's legacy alive, and Mahler's are now among the most often recorded of any symphonies. His frequent incorporation of vocal elements into symphonic writing brought to full fruition a process that had begun with Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, demonstrating his music's firm roots in the Germanic classical tradition. However, it was his huge tapestries of shifting moods and tones, ranging from tragedy to bitter irony (often explicitly indicated in performance directions), from café music to evocations of the sublime, that portended a century in which multiplicity ruled.
© Rovi Staff /TiVo
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Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (Recorded 1981) (Live)
New York Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik
Classical - Released by New York Philharmonic on 8 Dec 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Seven Songs of Latter Days: "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" (Digitally Remastered)
Latvian Radio Choir, Antra Bigaca
Classical - Released by EMG Classical on 3 Sep 2013
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Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor
Classical - Released by Twistar Music on 7 Nov 2022
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Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Recorded 1962) (Live)
New York Philharmonic, Sir John Barbirolli
Classical - Released by New York Philharmonic on 8 Dec 2017
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Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 5 In C Sharp Minor (Death In Venice)
Classical - Released by Classical.com Music on 16 Feb 2009
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Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (Recorded 1962) (Live)
New York Philharmonic, Sir Georg Solti, Irmgard Seefried
Classical - Released by New York Philharmonic on 8 Dec 2017
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The Classical Collection - Mahler - Las grandes sinfonías
Radio-Symphonieorchester Ljubljana
Classical - Released by ClassicalPirosDigital on 11 Jun 2015
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Mahler: Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit
Roland Hermann, Geoffrey Parsons
Chamber Music - Released by Claves Records on 1 May 1990
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A Classical Compendium: Mahler
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 17 Sep 2022
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An Evening of Classical: Mahler
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 1 Oct 2022
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Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G Major; Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (Arrangements for Chamber Orchestra)
Martingale Ensemble, Ken Selden, Deanna Breiwick
Classical - Released by MSR Classics on 9 Aug 2011
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The Art of Gustav Mahler
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 4 Jul 2022
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Soňa Červená chante Mahler (Kindertotenlieder, 3e symphonie)
Sona Cervena, Hermann Scherchen, Rolf Kleinert, Leipzig RSO, Gustav Mahler
Classical - Released by Collection Hommage on 4 Aug 2017
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Kondrashin: The Soviet Years. Mahler: Symphony No. 3
Classical - Released by Music Online on 30 Aug 2007
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Symphonies from Mahler & Sibelius
Classical - Released by Ermitage Rc on 23 Apr 2020
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Mahler - Das Lied Von Der Erde - The Song Of The Earth
Elsa Cavelti, Anton Dermota, Gustav Mahler, Otto Klemperer, Vienna Symphonic Orchestra
Classical - Released by Denon on 1 Jan 1990
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Mahler: Symphony No. 1 (Recorded 1959) (Live)
New York Philharmonic, Sir John Barbirolli
Classical - Released by New York Philharmonic on 8 Dec 2017
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Mahler: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor
Classical - Released by Everest Records on 10 Jul 1960
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Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection"
Classical - Released by Soundset on 4 Dec 2012
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Mahler: "Titan" Symphony No. 1 in D Major
Symphonic Music - Released by RHI on 6 Nov 2013
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Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Kerstin Thorborg, Carl Martin Ohmann
Classical - Released by Int - Bertus on 11 Oct 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo