“Life, death. Love, no love. Hope, no hope.”

Do you remember when you heard Mahler’s music for the first time.

Dudamel: This was years ago. It is funny how I got to know Mahler’s music. My father played the trombone in a Salsa group and he was also playing with an orchestra. I remember finding the trombone part of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 for the third trombone. I recall taking my father’s trombone and trying to play [imitates a trombone]… I was maybe 11 or 12 years old at the time, and I was playing the violin. But I remember a recording of the Symphony No. 1, I received it as a gift from an uncle. This was the first piece by Mahler that I ever listened to. It was a very special experience, because, even though I found it difficult to understand at the beginning, later when I started conducting, it was the first big piece that I conducted. It was amazing, because this was maybe three or four years later. I was 16 when I had that first experience with a Mahler symphony. So this was how I got into Mahler, listening to the orchestra playing Mahler in my home town, but especially through that recording that I received from an uncle. It was very special.

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The Doelen Concert Hall in Rotterdam has told us about their forthcoming Mahler concerts. They are:

30 September 2010
01 October 2010
02 October 2010
Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest
Conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Karen Cargill, alto
Het Nederlands Concertkoor
Roder Jongenskoor
Programme:
Mahler Symphony No. 3

25 november 2010
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Jukka-Pekka Saraste
Gal James, soprano
Programme:
R. Strauss Vier letzte Lieder
Mahler Symfonie nr.9

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“Mahlers first symphony is the great emotion of my youth!”

Do you remember the first time you heard Gustav Mahler’s music?

Chailly: The first time, yes, very clearly: it was in the very early 1960s in Rome, at the Auditorium del Foro Italico with the RAI-Rome orchestra. I attended a rehearsal of the Symphony No. 1, conducted by Zubin Mehta, who was very young at that time. I was there because my father was working in the programming of the classical music at RAI-Rome, and he had a meeting that day. He couldn’t stay with me, he left me completely alone in the last row of the hall of the parquet, of the parterre, and he said: “Stay there for one hour and just don’t move, don’t talk, don’t do anything!” And of course, when I heard the power of the music, of this symphony – I would only later discover that it was Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 – it left me with this feeling of complete standstill. I didn’t know what to do, how to react … Whether to cry, to shout, or to be overwhelmed by emotions … I was very, very young at that time – eight or nine years old. It is not only the great power of Mahler’s music, but it is also the great emotion of my youth.

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