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
-
Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 1-9
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lorin Maazel
Symphonic Music - Released by Signum Classics on 7 Apr 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 1-3
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lorin Maazel
Symphonic Music - Released by Signum Records on 2 Sep 2013
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Lieder
Christiane Karg, Malcolm Martineau, Gustav Mahler
Classical - Released by harmonia mundi on 9 Oct 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 7
Symphonic Music - Released by New York Philharmonic on 25 Aug 2017
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Sinfonie No. 5
Gustav Mahler, Landesjugendorchester Baden-Württemberg, Johannes Klumpp
Classical - Released by Animato on 11 Feb 2022
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 4-6
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lorin Maazel
Symphonic Music - Released by Signum Records on 5 May 2014
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 6
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Eliahu Inbal, Gustav Mahler
Classical - Released by Savoy on 25 Aug 1993
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Symphony No. 4
Classical - Released by Challenge Classics on 19 Oct 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bruno Walter Plays Gustav Mahler
Bruno Walter & the New York Philharmonic Orchestra
Classical - Released by Unchained Melody on 1 Apr 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No.9
Hallé Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder
Symphonic Music - Released by Halle Concerts Society on 2 Mar 2015
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 9
Michael Schønwandt, Danish National Symphony Orchestra
Classical - Released by Challenge Classics on 13 May 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 5
USSR TV and Radio Large Symphony Orchestra
Classical - Released by Blaricum CD Company (B.C.D.) B.V. on 1 Jan 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D Major "Titan"
Classical - Released by Everest Records on 28 Jul 1958
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 1
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lorin Maazel
Symphonic Music - Released by Signum Records on 2 Sep 2013
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gustav Mahler : Totenfeier - Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment, Vladimir Jurowski
Classical - Released by Signum Records on 24 Sep 2012
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, "Resurrection" (Arrangement for Small Orchestra)
Gilbert Kaplan, Janina Baechle, Marlis Petersen
Chamber Music - Released by AVIE Records on 11 Feb 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 In C Sharp Minor
Symphonic Music - Released by RHI on 2 Jul 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Christian Elsner: Urgedanken (Beethoven, Mahler, Wagner, Brahms)
Christian Elsner, Burkhard Kehring, Ludwig van Beethoven, Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms
Classical - Released by Rondeau Production on 2 Dec 2022
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler - Legendary Recordings
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 25 Mar 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gustav Mahler und sein Klavier
Classical - Released by Preiser Records on 11 Mar 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Welte Mignon Mystery, Vol. 15
Gustav Mahler, Hans Haass, Carl Reinecke, Edvard Grieg
Classical - Released by TACET Musikproduktion on 5 Feb 2021
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo