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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The Welte Mignon Mystery, Vol. 15
Gustav Mahler, Hans Haass, Carl Reinecke, Edvard Grieg
Classique - Paru chez TACET Musikproduktion le 5 févr. 2021
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Mahler: Symphony No. 3
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lorin Maazel
Classique - Paru chez Signum Records le 2 sept. 2013
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Gustav Mahler - Symphony N. 5
Classique - Paru chez Azzurra Music le 1 avr. 1999
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lorin Maazel
Musique symphonique - Paru chez Signum Records le 2 sept. 2013
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Quinta Sinfonía, Mahler
Classique - Paru chez ClassicalPirosDigital le 29 nov. 2015
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Symphony No. 2: III. In ruhig fliessender Bewergung
Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Philharmonia Orchestra, Jennifer Johnston
Classique - Paru chez Signum Records le 22 août 2023
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Kindertotenlieder, Rückert Lieder & Schoenberg: 4 Lieder, Op. 2
Anne Schwanewilms, Malcolm Martineau
Musique vocale (profane et sacrée) - Paru chez Onyx Classics le 4 mai 2015
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Gustav Mahler - Symphonie Nr. 1 "Der Titan"
Musique symphonique - Paru chez Seyffert Music le 27 mai 2011
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Mahler - Sinfonía Nº 5
Classique - Paru chez JamadaDigital le 25 févr. 2015
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Mahler: Complete Wunderhorn Songs
Dietrich Henschel, Boris Berezovsky
Musique vocale (profane et sacrée) - Paru chez Evil Penguin Classic le 13 mai 2013
4F de Télérama4 étoiles Classica5 de Diapason16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
Classique - Paru chez Pipeline Music le 8 juin 2006
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Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (arr. Erwin Stein)
Douglas Boyd, Manchester Camerata, Kate Royal
Classique - Paru chez AVIE Records le 2 août 2005
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Mahler: Seven Songs of Latter Days: "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" (Digitally Remastered)
Latvian Radio Choir, Antra Bigaca
Classique - Paru chez EMG Classical le 3 sept. 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor
Classique - Paru chez Twistar Music le 7 nov. 2022
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Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 5 In C Sharp Minor (Death In Venice)
Classique - Paru chez Classical.com Music le 1 janv. 1991
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Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Recorded 1962) (Live)
New York Philharmonic, Sir John Barbirolli
Classique - Paru chez New York Philharmonic le 8 déc. 2017
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Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (Recorded 1962) (Live)
New York Philharmonic, Sir Georg Solti, Irmgard Seefried
Classique - Paru chez New York Philharmonic le 8 déc. 2017
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The Classical Collection - Mahler - Las grandes sinfonías
Radio-Symphonieorchester Ljubljana
Classique - Paru chez ClassicalPirosDigital le 11 juin 2015
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Mahler: Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit
Roland Hermann, Geoffrey Parsons
Musique de chambre - Paru chez Claves Records le 1 mai 1990
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Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (Recorded 1981) (Live)
New York Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik
Classique - Paru chez New York Philharmonic le 8 déc. 2017
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A Classical Compendium: Mahler
Classique - Paru chez UME - Global Clearing House le 17 sept. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo