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: Lieder
Christiane Karg, Malcolm Martineau, Gustav Mahler
Clásica - Editado por harmonia mundi el 09-10-2020
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Mahler: Symphony No. 7
Música sinfónica - Editado por New York Philharmonic el 25-08-2017
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Mahler: Sinfonie No. 5
Gustav Mahler, Landesjugendorchester Baden-Württemberg, Johannes Klumpp
Clásica - Editado por Animato el 11-02-2022
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Mahler: Symphony No. 6
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Eliahu Inbal, Gustav Mahler
Clásica - Editado por Savoy el 25-08-1993
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Mahler: Symphony No.9
Hallé Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder
Música sinfónica - Editado por Halle Concerts Society el 02-03-2015
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Mahler: Symphony No. 5
USSR TV and Radio Large Symphony Orchestra
Clásica - Editado por Blaricum CD Company (B.C.D.) B.V. el 01-01-2004
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Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D Major "Titan"
Clásica - Editado por Everest Records el 28-07-1958
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Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, "Resurrection" (Arrangement for Small Orchestra)
Gilbert Kaplan, Janina Baechle, Marlis Petersen
Música de cámara - Editado por AVIE Records el 11-02-2014
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Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 In C Sharp Minor
Música sinfónica - Editado por RHI el 02-07-2015
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Christian Elsner: Urgedanken (Beethoven, Mahler, Wagner, Brahms)
Christian Elsner, Burkhard Kehring, Ludwig van Beethoven, Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms
Clásica - Editado por Rondeau Production el 02-12-2022
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Gustav Mahler und sein Klavier
Clásica - Editado por Preiser Records el 11-03-2010
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Mahler - Legendary Recordings
Clásica - Editado por UME - Global Clearing House el 25-03-2021
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The Welte Mignon Mystery, Vol. 15
Gustav Mahler, Hans Haass, Carl Reinecke, Edvard Grieg
Clásica - Editado por TACET Musikproduktion el 05-02-2021
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Mahler: Urlicht - Lieder
Clásica - Editado por Onyx Classics el 02-10-2006
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Mahler - Great Recordings
Clásica - Editado por UME - Global Clearing House el 01-08-2020
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Quinta Sinfonía, Mahler
Clásica - Editado por ClassicalPirosDigital el 29-11-2015
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Symphony No. 2: III. In ruhig fliessender Bewergung
Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Philharmonia Orchestra, Jennifer Johnston
Clásica - Editado por Signum Records el 22-08-2023
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Mahler: Kindertotenlieder, Rückert Lieder & Schoenberg: 4 Lieder, Op. 2
Anne Schwanewilms, Malcolm Martineau
Música vocal (profana y sacra) - Editado por Onyx Classics el 04-05-2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Complete Wunderhorn Songs
Dietrich Henschel, Boris Berezovsky
Música vocal (profana y sacra) - Editado por Evil Penguin Classic el 13-05-2013
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Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
Clásica - Editado por Pipeline Music el 08-06-2006
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Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (arr. Erwin Stein)
Douglas Boyd, Manchester Camerata, Kate Royal
Clásica - Editado por AVIE Records el 02-08-2005
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo