“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. (more…)
Mr. Blomstedt, do you remember when you heard Mahler’s music for the first time?
Blomstedt: I think so. It was the 1st Symphony and I didn’t like it particularly. I was 14 or 15 and I thought it was vulgar. It was in Gothenburg. I am sure it was very well played by Issay Dobrowen, but I was right in my Bach/Beethoven late quartets phase of my development, so anything that diverged too much from that I felt was not really worth my attention [laughs]. It took quite a few years before I realized that this was great music.
“Mahler completely knocked me sideways … and that’s the reason why I’m a conductor today.”
Do you remember when you heard the music of Gustav Mahler for the first time?
I am not sure. I grew up in Liverpool when they were doing what was actually the first European Mahler-cycle with the same orchestra and conductor. It’s extraordinary to think of that – this was the middle of the ‘60s. But no-one in Europe had played all the symphonies with the same conductor at this time. It had only been done in Utah, by the Utah Symphony Orchestra. And look – one forgets how off-centre Mahler was at this time, before Bernstein, before etc. etc. Berthold Goldschmidt had only just performed the Mahler Third for the first time in Britain; that was in 1962. I have still a magnificent tape of that. So, Sir Charles Groves and the Liverpool Philharmonic, they did two a year for five and a half years, because they also did Das Lied von der Erde, they also did the early version of the completed Tenth. And I can remember, because I was studying: violin with one player in the orchestra, percussion with another, and they said: “Ah! We’re on our twice-yearly struggle with Mahler”.
“In Mahler you have to find the balance between chamber music and explosions”
The first question is always the same – if you remember when you heard the music of Gustav Mahler for the first time?
Nelsons: You know, it’s very interesting. The first time I consciously heard the music of Gustav Mahler – I’m sure I must have heard it earlier, but the first time I was aware that it was Gustav Mahler – was when I heard his Symphony No. 1 on a tape. At the time I was very interested in nature sounds, in music about nature. I had recordings of water sounds and of bird songs, and one day I asked somebody what music they could recommend to listen to if I liked that kind of music, just out of interest. This person was not a musician, but he gave me a tape and said ‘There is this one composer …’ He had forgotten the name, but it was Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. The beginning, this chord of strings, it is also a sound of nature, absolutely … [sings]. This was the first piece by Mahler that I heard, I think I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, and I fell in love with Mahler’s music. It’s interesting that it grew out of my love to, and interest in, nature. It also came because I was doing martial arts at the time, I started quite early and I wanted to meditate to different music, to think and to relax [laughs]… Afterwards, in music school, we studied all the symphonies, and then of course I started to play them myself in the orchestra. So I played the Symphony No. 1 and other symphonies and then conducted them myself. But the first influence was Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, and it was through a love of nature that I encountered his music.
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.
“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.
Maestro Honeck, the first question is always the same – do you remember when you heard the music of Gustav Mahler for the first time?
Honeck: I remember it very well. I was a member of the Austrian Youth Orchestra and we went to Berlin to participate in the Karajan Competition. Several youth orchestras from all over Europe were taking part and I heard the German Youth Orchestra ‘Junge Deutsche Philharmonie’ performing Mahler’s 1st Symphony. I was extremely impressed right away, not only by the big sound – other symphonies also have a big sound – but what impressed me very much was the way Mahler treated the darkness and also the special meaning of his music, for example in the third movement. It might have something to do with my own experience because I lost my mother. She was the mother of nine children. I took part in the funeral, of course, and the way this funeral was conducted reminded me a little bit of this music. It might have been connected to this. I must have been 13 or 14 years old at the time and it was remarkable for me. It was probably one of the most important moments for me. I was almost shocked that this can happen with music, that it came into my life and into my heart. Since then, Mahler has been a part of my inner heart.
“What Mahler wrote is so clear that it is nearly impossible to move away from it.”
Maestro, do you remember when you heard the music of Gustav Mahler for the first time?
Gergiev: I remember it very vaguely. It was the 1st Symphony. Obviously, I was a very, very young man, but I remember this final movement when the horn section suddenly stands up and continues to play while standing. It’s a very powerful statement of lust in this symphony. That was very memorable. I don’t think that it is now my favorite memory of all the symphonies that Mahler composed, but it was my first one. That was a long time ago and of course it was also a long time before I started to look at Mahler’s symphonies – although when I was preparing to participate in the Herbert von Karajan Competition for young conductors, I saw that Mahler’s 1st Symphony was proposed for young conductors to prepare. This means that if you prepare it, you could be asked to conduct the second movement, part of the finale, part of the first movement or just a couple of tempo transitions at the end – they don’t give you the entire symphony to conduct. So you have to know it and I knowingly started to study the symphony and played it for myself, if not to get to the heart of it, then to be able to conduct it, should I be given the chance to conduct it in the second round of the competition. This symphony was not for the firstround, the beginning of the competition was very classical. I remember conducting maybe Beethoven’s 2nd Symphony – the repertoire was very classical. Somehow I got into the second round and then into the third and then I got to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic which was a dream come true for a young man like me.
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