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: Kindertotenlieder - Schubert, Schumann, Brahms: Lieder
Classical - Released by Urania on 4 Nov 2009
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Mahler: Urlicht - Lieder
Classical - Released by Onyx Classics on 2 Oct 2006
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Mahler - Great Recordings
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 1 Aug 2020
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Mahler: Symphony No. 3
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lorin Maazel
Classical - Released by Signum Records on 2 Sep 2013
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Gustav Mahler - Symphony N. 5
Classical - Released by Azzurra Music on 1 Apr 1999
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Mahler: Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'
Philharmonia Orchestra, Lorin Maazel
Symphonic Music - Released by Signum Records on 2 Sep 2013
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Quinta Sinfonía, Mahler
Classical - Released by ClassicalPirosDigital on 29 Nov 2015
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Symphony No. 2: III. In ruhig fliessender Bewergung
Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Philharmonia Orchestra, Jennifer Johnston
Classical - Released by Signum Records on 22 Aug 2023
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Mahler: Kindertotenlieder, Rückert Lieder & Schoenberg: 4 Lieder, Op. 2
Anne Schwanewilms, Malcolm Martineau
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by Onyx Classics on 4 May 2015
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Gustav Mahler - Symphonie Nr. 1 "Der Titan"
Symphonic Music - Released by Seyffert Music on 27 May 2011
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Mahler - Sinfonía Nº 5
Classical - Released by JamadaDigital on 25 Feb 2015
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Mahler: Complete Wunderhorn Songs
Dietrich Henschel, Boris Berezovsky
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by Evil Penguin Classic on 13 May 2013
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Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
Classical - Released by Pipeline Music on 8 Jun 2006
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Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (arr. Erwin Stein)
Douglas Boyd, Manchester Camerata, Kate Royal
Classical - Released by AVIE Records on 2 Aug 2005
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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
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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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Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 5 In C Sharp Minor (Death In Venice)
Classical - Released by Classical.com Music on 1 Jan 1991
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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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