“When the New York Philharmonic plays Mahler, I enjoy this deep feeling of pathos”

The first question is always the same – if you remember the first time you heard the music of Gustav Mahler?

Gilbert: I couldn’t swear that it was the first time I heard his music, but my first memory of Mahler is very clear. I was nine years old and my parents decided that it was time for me to hear all the symphonies of Mahler. The New York Philharmonic was playing a Mahler festival in Carnegie Hall, I think it was in September or October of 1976. They bought me a ticket and I heard all the symphonies of Mahler. I think that the first symphony that was performed was the 5th and – maybe because it was the first or maybe because there was this incredible trumpet solo that really struck my nine-year-old fancy – that’s the one that stayed with me. But I did hear all the symphonies. It was back when the seats in Carnegie Hall were not reserved for the boxes, so whoever came first had the front seat in the box – now they are numbered and you have to sit in your numbered seat – so I would make my father get me to the concert early and I would run up the stairs, and there was one other young guy who wanted to be in the front as well and we would race up the stairs and it was always the two of us in the front of the box. That was probably a life-changing experience for me, to hear Mahler’s symphonies… I certainly have loved Mahler since then, and it’s incredible to me now to think that I am actually conducting these pieces that I heard at such a young age.

As a nine-year-old hearing this complex music, do you remember your emotions? Was it just overwhelmingly loud?

Gilbert: You know, I liked music and I liked going to concerts, and there was something about the music of Mahler that really struck my fancy. For my tenth birthday, which was a few months after that, my piano teacher gave me a pocket score of the 5th Symphony. I didn’t think about it then, but it must have been because I had spoken about the experience – obviously, it had made a great impression on me. I still have the score, it’s a treasure… it was the first score that was my own, and it was the 5th Symphony of Mahler, which is a piece we just conducted the other night in the Musikverein.

And when did you start to conduct Mahler?

Gilbert: I guess my first Mahler symphony came soon after I started conducting professionally, it must have been in 1995. I think that Mahler’s 1st Symphony was the first one I did, in Tokyo.

Do you remember who was conducting in 1976?

Gilbert: Absolutely. In this festival the symphonies were split and they also did most of the orchestral songs – it was a major Mahler event in New York. Erich Leinsdorf, James Levine and Pierre Boulez shared the nine symphonies. Actually, they did the Adagio from the 10th as well.

Very different approaches, then…

Gilbert: Yes, completely!

There is such a huge Mahler tradition in New York, as we experienced two days ago, could you define this kind of tradition?

Gilbert: Well, I have always felt that the New York Philharmonic has an innate understanding of the music of Mahler. What I like about them is that they really bring great feeling to everything they do. The thing that I find amazing about the music of Mahler is that it can really withstand many different approaches. You can hear convincing performances of Mahler that sound very different.

Some conductors say that with Mahler all you need to do is follow the directions, because the scores are so carefully noted and because he was such a wonderful conductor himself that he actually knew what he wanted. So, if he says ‘slow down’, then you slow down and if he says ‘don’t slow down’, then you don’t slow down – it’s very clear what he wanted.

But that having been said, there is an incredible range of possibilities in the way you approach Mahler. Let me just talk about performances that I have heard: I have enjoyed performances of Mahler by the Vienna Philharmonic – you somehow feel that the folk aspect and the traditional Austrian dances are just so natural here. Then you might hear a British orchestra play and you don’t have that same sense, but there’s a clarity that might be really telling for the music. When the New York Philharmonic plays Mahler I think that there’s a wonderful mixture of this; there is a probably intuitive understanding of the folk side, but it is not as pronounced as when you hear, say, the Vienna Philharmonic. But in New York I do appreciate this deep feeling of pathos and of the life experience that I think the orchestra really imbues every note with.

Your parents are or were members of the orchestra. Did they know anyone who played under the baton of Mahler?

Gilbert: I don’t think so; I think that was too far back. You know, it was of course Leonard Bernstein who really was responsible for the Mahler Renaissance in the United States and the symphonies, back in the 1960s when he was conducting them, were not so well known and not so commonly played. That is, I think, the history of Mahler performances, he was obviously an incredibly important musician in Vienna, in Prague and Hamburg and all the places where he was chief conductor, and then finally in New York, but for various reasons he suffered an unjust neglect for a while. Then came Leonard Bernstein and I think he thought he was Mahler. He not only conducted the music brilliantly, but he really identified with the soul of the music and he made an incredibly convincing case for it. I think for a long time there were a lot of musicians who felt that the only way to do Mahler was the way Lenny did it. Now, of course, I think, as I was saying earlier, that there is a myriad number of ways that the music can be played. But I really am grateful, and I think we are all grateful to him for championing the music the way he did.

At the same time he was blamed for over-powering Mahler. Is there a danger to over-power his music?

Gilbert: I think so, although you cannot really argue against his interpretations of Mahler because they were his interpretations and he was such a great musician and such a great man that you were convinced when you heard him conduct the music.

I have to say that many of the experiences I had with Mahler were first with him, not counting that early Mahler cycle I heard when I was nine. But when I was really starting to become a conscious musician, if I can say that, Lenny was conducting the Mahler symphonies with the New York Philharmonic. I heard him play and record most of the symphonies, if not all of them, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th… and it wasn’t until much later that I started to realize that there was another way to go about it. He imbued every note with such importance that sometimes – and this is not a criticism, only something I realized when I studied the music subsequently – sometimes you lost track of where you were in the piece, the form wasn’t necessarily as clear as it might be. What I try to do when I study a piece, although I would never presume to compare myself to Bernstein, is to remember how important it can feel at any moment, but also to try and remember where I am in the piece and actually follow the long line.

You just defined your approach – is it more that you have a pulse and that you take care of the structure, while the emotion is written in the piece and you don’t have to pay that much attention to it?

Gilbert: No, I wouldn’t say that at all, because I think that ultimately Mahler’s music is about life as he saw it, it’s kind of a lens through which you can see his philosophy and his metaphysical and philosophical approach. He was obviously a great musician, but he was also very interested in the great metaphysical thinkers.

He tried, I think, to create a picture of the world through his music and he obviously was a very emotional person. I think you obviously need to play his music with deep feeling, but I think if you get lost in that side, then it’s not so effective. So, you have to make sure that it is balanced with a kind of clarity of structure, because it is very detailed music and he took the trouble to create all these details and all these layers and I, for one, find it very exciting when you can hear them. I have admired, for example, the Mahler performances of Pierre Boulez, which could not be more different from those of Leonard Bernstein – they are very dispassionate, but very revealing.

Bernstein said that Mahler anticipated the catastrophes of the 20th century – would you agree?

Gilbert: You know, that’s an interesting way to look at it, but I would rather say that within each person there is a microcosm or a miniature version of the world, and Mahler had such an interesting and eventful life that he is actually writing about all people, even though his symphonies were autobiographical.

So you see a close connection between his life and his music?

Gilbert: Absolutely. I think he was consciously attempting to reveal his life and what life is about in his music.

So you think that the problems of anti-Semitism, for example, which he faced in this city, can be found in some way in his music?

Gilbert: Maybe I wouldn’t go so far to be so literal, but I do feel that there is a very Jewish sensibility to a lot of his music and I am sure that he was trying to find a way to express this. Even though he superficially and publicly renounced Judaism in order to gain acceptance in Vienna, I think that it couldn’t be hidden or suppressed in his music. There are Klezmer elements and he blends Judaic folk elements with protestant hymns. It is like a kaleidoscopic picture of life in Vienna at the time.

Going back to New York and Mahler’s time there and his relationship with Arturo Toscanini, who felt that Mahler could be dangerous for him because he was such a tremendous conductor. Have you researched this topic?

Gilbert: Well, I have read a great deal about Mahler and it appears that every place he went he was competitive with the other big musicians in the area. He must have been a difficult man in a way and there was some kind of need to be the only one. Toscanini also had some of this, I am sure – he famously said to one soprano who proclaimed herself a star that when the sun is out you don’t see the stars. And I am sure that was a little bit the way Mahler felt. When you have two such giants in the same city… just imagine what a time it must have been to hear Toscanini conducting the ‘Ring’ and then to hear Mahler conduct Wagner operas – what an amazing chance New York City had.

But for me it seems that in New York, Mahler stopped fighting to be number one.

Gilbert: Well, I think he was kind of giving up, he was letting go of life. He seemed to have lost his spirit then. He was a hypochondriac and I think that while he wanted to remain hopeful, somehow there was a pessimism that crept in, which is a sad way to live. I feel sorry that he lived only some 50 years and it wasn’t really long enough, as he seemed to only just get going as a composer.

The Mahler Renaissance started very late in Europe, during the 1960s, already 50 years after his death, but it probably would have started earlier had it not been for the Second World War. Why do you think it took so long for Mahler to become popular in the States?

Gilbert: Who can say? There are other composers who have been neglected and who finally come back. Bach was neglected for a long time in Germany. Maybe Mahler was ahead of his time, maybe he really did foreshadow in a way that was not graspable. He was so brilliant and he had such an imagination for what an orchestra could be. I think even since Mahler there has been no composer who has really exploited the possibilities of an orchestra quite the way he did. If you listen to the power and the richness of experience that he could create, with a large orchestra, yes, but with an essentially traditional orchestra – there was nothing unusual about the instruments he used. Okay, he put an organ in his pieces and he used eight horns rather than four, but essentially it’s a traditional orchestra and the colors and the power and the richness of texture that he could create I don’t think were ever equaled before or since. And the message he was trying to convey – he was so consciously trying to say something and that’s perhaps why he started to use voice and songs in his music, because he must have felt that there was a limit, eventually, to what he could express with only instruments. He was trying to say so much that maybe it was more of a jump than people were able to take. He was there himself, at first, to champion his own works and to be his own advocate, but after that maybe there was no one else who was able to pick it up at that time.

But in New York he didn’t conduct his own music that much…

Gilbert: That’s true, he didn’t do his own music and I get excited when I read about the range of his repertoire and the music that he liked – Italian Opera and, of course, a lot of German music, but composers that we have never heard of. And he really knew these scores; he would revise them and rewrite them. He was obviously intimately and deeply involved in an incredible amount of repertoire, so I am sure a lot of people didn’t even think of him as a composer.

Have you studied Mahler’s scores, which are now in the archives of the New York Philharmonic?

Gilbert: Study, no, but I have seen many of the scores and it’s fascinating to see his own markings. Even in his own scores there are changes which haven’t appeared in even the latest editions, and it’s not clear whether he wanted them to be definitive changes or if they were based on the moment. He was above all a practical musician, so if there was one musician in the orchestra who may not have been up to a particular line, he would put it in another instrument or if he felt some instrument wasn’t playing loud enough, he would double it somewhere else or add a percussion impact to emphasize something. It’s not clear, and I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure, whether he wanted these markings to remain or whether they were just based on one particular week when he wanted to get the best performance he could. But it’s amazing to see his brain, and his writing is so neat and meticulous. He was obviously an incredibly thoughtful composer.

Almost all the chief conductors of the New York Philharmonic were great Mahler conductors – Bernstein, Boulez, Mehta, Maazel. Do you feel the tradition of this heritage in the orchestra, in the sound, in the articulation?

Gilbert: Absolutely! And that’s not only true for Mahler and the New York Philharmonic. Great orchestras bring something to the music they play that really affects conductors. I think the challenge and the secret to working with orchestras like these is knowing how to accept what is offered and not to let it completely drown you. I have enjoyed conducting many composers, but with Mahler there is definitely a special will that the orchestra has and there is a current that you can’t help but be swept along by. It’s really a pleasure to conduct music that the orchestra feels so strongly about. I think they love to play Mahler and they know that they sound good when they play Mahler, so there is always a special energy. No matter who conducts Mahler with the New York Philharmonic, and I have heard different conductors do it, you can still feel the personality of the orchestra coming through very, very strongly. This is true for a number of composers, but maybe above all for Gustav Mahler.

What advice would you give young conductors who have their first experiences with Mahler?

Gilbert: I would tell them to spend enough time studying the scores. It’s very easy to listen to recordings these days and to hear what other people have done, and this can be informative and educational, but I do think that it is important, with any composer but maybe particularly with Mahler, to look at what he wrote, since he actually knew what he wanted. And he was practical enough as a composer and musician to make really useful markings in his scores. To really know what he put down is absolutely crucial. You don’t really have that with other composers, as great as they are. Schumann, for instance, when he had a certain effect in mind, he would write something that you have to interpret. You really have to figure out what he means, for example, when he writes ‘fortissimo’ for the whole orchestra – if everybody plays fortissimo, or what they consider to be fortissimo, you may not get the right effect, so it’s important for each person to know what fortissimo means for him or her. Mahler, on the other hand, is very clear that this instrument is supposed to play mezzo forte with molto crescendo and the person next to him, who has the same notes, is meant to play, for instance, sempre piano, senza crescendo. He knows what the effect of the instrument is supposed to be. So, for the low register of the harp he’ll write forte when the prevailing dynamic is pianissimo – he writes forte because he wants to make sure that it is heard. The character doesn’t become forte, but it’s the balance that he is going for. And you can find examples of this all over the place – in a huge passage, he’ll write that the brass suddenly have subito mezzo forte and you hear many orchestras who simply ignore that because they think that this is exciting music and he must not have meant that, but he actually did mean that because there are other things that he wants to hear. So, you can’t only go on tradition and you really have to go straight to the score. That’s probably the main piece of advice that I would give to myself as well as to younger conductors.

Mahler often wrote comments like ‘Nicht eilen’ that seem to me to be comments for himself. He knew that when he conducted his pieces he could be so affected that he reminded himself not to rush. Do you adhere to all these pieces of advice one hundred percent?

Gilbert: Well, I try to notice everything that he writes. And if he writes ‘Nicht eilen’ then it just doesn’t make sense to me when you hear a performance that suddenly makes a molto accelerando. This happens, you hear that all the time. I really do think that it can be very useful to just follow the directions.

What did Mahler want?

Gilbert: [laughs] What did Mahler want? I think that’s a very hard question and I certainly don’t think that I can answer it. But I guess that he wanted music to be really important to people and he was a total musician in that he performed himself and he performed his own music. He composed in a genius way, but I also really admire that he recognized the value and the quality of so many other composers throughout history. I think that, to him, music and life was basically the same thing. He wanted happiness and he obviously experienced tragedy in his life and while he wanted to express that through music, he also wanted to transcend that through music. He must have deeply believed in the power of music to not only represent life, but also to enhance it. And I am guessing and hoping that this was what he wanted, that he wanted music to really be meaningful to people in their lives.

Did he want to show himself as well?

Gilbert: Well, on some level, composition is a narcissistic act, but I can’t think that this was ultimately his goal. I said earlier in this interview that his music was autobiographical and in that sense, I do think that it was about himself, but I think that it jumps to a higher order of expression very quickly. It really was about more than himself. So, while Mahler was clearly a very self-centered, needy man, I think he was also very generous with what he created in his music.

Was his music referring to his time, to the fact that everything collapsed soon after he died?

Gilbert: Undoubtedly. The fin-de-siècle, especially in Vienna, was obviously an incredibly fraught, difficult time where the old was going out and the new was coming in. And I think that Mahler is a very emblematic composer in that way, because he took the symphony and kind of destroyed it and turned it into something absolutely brand new. This makes him a very crucial figure in the history of music.

Is there a symphony you feel closest to?

Gilbert: You know, I have a very soft spot in my heart for the 7th Symphony; I love the 7th a lot. You seem surprised by that answer. I find it just so mysterious, and sometimes I think that it is my favorite one. I know that this is a provocative answer, but I really mean it. There is something about it that just draws me in, in a very bizarre way. But the 1st Symphony is also an amazing work. It was written earlier, obviously, and it is such an explosion of energy. It reminds me of ‘Don Juan’ in that it’s an early work by a younger composer who has this well of experience and life-force that somehow just has to come out in a completely fresh and new way. The 1st Symphony is amazing to me in that way, what he was able to do in that symphony. I think that the 9th Symphony maybe goes the farthest emotionally and philosophically. It’s not quite as bizarre and twisted as, say, the 6th, 7th and 8th. I think he goes back to a more direct and more sincere musical language. So, I would say maybe the 1st and the 9th in that way, with a special dispensation for the 7th.

And where would Mahler have gone?

Gilbert: It’s hard to say. I don’t know. He didn’t write that many pieces and his oeuvre is relatively limited in terms of genre, compared to other composers, and he did seem to create a kind of ‘closed arch’ in his work. I really couldn’t say where he would have gone. He didn’t seem interested in writing opera, which is strange, because people say that he may have been the greatest opera conductor ever. He also wrote hardly any instrumental or chamber music, except for maybe one piece. But symphonically he made a very convincing statement through his works and it’s a real canon… I wish I knew.

You are a great Berg conductor. How do you see Mahler’s influence on the Second Viennese School?

Gilbert: I think it’s enormous. And that’s why I have often programmed Mahler and Berg together. I think it’s very instructive if you hear, for example, the unfinished 10th Symphony and then go straight into Berg’s ‘Three Pieces’, because it really could be a completion of that symphony. Berg took this sensibility of Mahler and took it one step further. I don’t know if Mahler himself would have gone there had he continued to compose, but Berg and then even Schönberg with his highly serial music – I think that this disintegration of the traditional approach to composition started with Mahler. You can hear this in the 9th Symphony which becomes virtually atonal and is completely off the map as far as traditional harmony goes. Maybe the next step was what was picked up by Berg, Webern and Schönberg.

What would you have asked Mahler?

Gilbert: I am always interested in what may be a very mundane, musician, insider-type question, but I am always curious about the tempos – what tempos he would have taken, for example, the Adagietto in the 5th Symphony. If it’s a love song, should it sound drippingly sentimental and pathetic or should it have a freshness and eager, young, spring-like character? The tempo can affect that a lot and it’s hard to read that from the score. He says molto adagio, extremely slow, and I just wonder what those things mean, because ‘slow’ is obviously a relative concept. I’d be very interested to ask him first of all what he thought the right tempo was, but also how much latitude he would offer other performers. He didn’t hear other people perform his music and so I don’t know if he thought of his music as free to be interpreted and I am curious what he would make of the variety of approaches that you see today in interpreting his music. So, I would ask him what he thinks about that.

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler
Transcript: Agnes Vukovich
17.5.2011, Vienna
© Universal Edition