Do you remember when you heard Gustav Mahler’s music for the first time?
Oramo: When I heard Gustav Mahler’s music for the first time – I have to confess that I can’t remember when it would have been. I went to concerts with my Dad quite often when I was little, and especially when my Mum was playing, she is a pianist. But Mahler’s music – I suppose it could have been when Igor Markevitch was conducting in Helsinki. And I seem to remember that my mother played Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto with him, and then there was Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. It could have been that.
“Mahler wanted to live, that’s the whole point of his symphonies! It’s the love of life, not the love of death.”
Mr. Pappano, do you remember when you heard the music of Gustav Mahler for the first time?
Pappano: My first encounter with the music of Gustav Mahler was of course the vocal music; the Rückert-Lieder –Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen had a huge impact on me, but you know, strangely enough, the song that stays with me is Liebst du um Schönheit. I know that this song was originally not part of the group, but it’s so specifically Mahlerian. Mahler’s identity is absolutely identifiable – in three notes. And this is what made such a huge impression on me; it couldn’t be anybody else.
“Mahler came out of nowhere and what he wrote was shocking.”
Do you remember when you first heard the music of Gustav Mahler?
Maazel: The first time I conducted a movement of a Gustav Mahler Symphony was in Tanglewood. I was a young conductor – I was 20, I think – and I conducted the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and that was my first contact with his music.
“The first time I heard Mahler, it was like I was in heaven.”
Do you remember the first time you heard the music of Gustav Mahler?
Jansons: I can’t remember the year exactly. I am not so young anymore that I can remember so many years ago [laughs]. I think it was approximately the end of the 50s or the beginning of the 60s, something like that, so I was probably around 16-18 years old. It’s hard to say exactly because I heard so much music growing up with music in a family of musicians, and I attended so many concerts and operas with my father, that it is very difficult for me now to remember which composer, and which piece, I heard at which time.
„Es ist ein gigantisches Missverständnis, dass die große Mahler-Renaissance gerade mit Bernstein anfängt.“
Meine erste Frage an alle Dirigenten ist immer dieselbe: ob sie sich erinnern können, wann sie zum ersten mal die Musik von Gustav Mahler gehört haben.
Gielen: Ich kann mich sehr gut erinnern. Es war um 1956 in Wien – wo ich bis 1960 gelebt habe – als Mitropoulos mit den Wiener Philharmonikern die 6. Symphonie aufgeführt hat. Die Philharmoniker machen ja drei Proben, es war jedoch unterprobiert. Ich habe Mitropoulos sehr bewundert, ich habe ihm auch an der Oper assistiert und habe ihm den Maskenball nachdirigiert.
“Mahler wanted to describe all of life, he wanted his music to be a universe in itself.”
Do you remember the first time you heard the music of Gustav Mahler?
Zinman: Yes I do, but I didn’t know it was Mahler at the time. It was in New York City when I was about thirteen years old, and I was taken to a rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic in New York City which Mitropoulos was conducting. And he was something which I had never heard before and didn’t know at all: I had studied the violin from the age of 6 and I played a lot of music, but I’d never heard this music before. And I thought maybe it was something Spanish, I didn’t know what it was – it was probably something from the 4th Symphony that was a little bit Spanish – and I was quite impressed by the sound of it, and I remember thinking ‘what is this?’ But I never found out. So after that I heard some Mahler on the radio, conducted by Bruno Walter, and I think it was probably the 4th, or the 1st, or the 9th Symphony, but I still didn’t know any Mahler so I just thought, yes, this is great music. Then later I went to the Oberlin Conservatory and there was a society called the Mahler Bruckner Society. I knew nothing about Bruckner and even less about Mahler, and the guys who were members of this fellowship were very weird people and so we kind of kept away from them. But this was in 1954, and there was already a Mahler Bruckner Society. And then, while I was at the Conservatory, we played Kindertotenlieder with a mezzo-soprano, and I played in the orchestra for that and it was really very important for me. I immediately got a score and I got records of the Symphonies and started listening to Mahler.
“Bruno Walter said to me: don’t be shy, play Mahler in a vulgar way.”
Do you remember the first time you heard the music of Gustav Mahler?
Mehta: That was in Bombay. It was a recording of the Symphony No. 4 conducted by Bruno Walter, and the singer was Desi Halban. As a young person, perhaps this was a good start, because the Symphony No. 4 looks at the world through the eyes of a child. I was not a child, I was a teenager, but the music was immediately accessible. Of course my father had already been to New York for four or five years and had heard, not so much Mahler, but a little of it: Mitropoulos with the New York Philharmonic; Lenny [Bernstein] had not quite started as yet. So my father’s connection with Mahler was not as great as with other classical composers. Also, my father was a man who was a great chamber musician, and there was no Mahler chamber music in that sense. So what we had was a recording of Bruno Walter, and then of course the first live performance in Vienna. In my early life, everything was in Vienna, everything [laughs]: my first opera, my first symphony, the first orchestra that I heard live was the Vienna Philharmonic, which is not bad. I didn’t hear a second-class orchestra in a province and then come to Vienna later, I didn’t have that transition. The Vienna Philharmonic was the first orchestra I heard in my life, and it is still the first orchestra in my life; this tradition, this sound, this conglomeration of chamber musicians. I have tried to imitate it in other countries where I have been a music director, but here is where I learnt it all, that’s my point.
Do you remember when you heard Mahler’s music for the first time, and what your reaction was?
Salonen: I cannot remember what the first piece was; it might have been the 5th Symphony. My conducting teacher, Jorma Panula, was the first Finnish conductor to conduct a Mahler cycle, that is all the Mahler symphonies, and this was in Finland in the 70s. I did hear every piece in the cycle during that time, but I cannot remember what the first one was. I remember the feeling though – I was a little bewildered. I was very familiar with Bruckner at the time, and I was very taken by the simplicity and clarity of the form in Bruckner. There is a kind of lack of evolution; he just presents the material – a bit like Japanese cuisine in a way, here is the raw material. Whereas with Mahler, especially later Mahler, the material is in a state of constant flux; there is constant variation going on, and there is sometimes cyclical variation, so you have variations upon variations in a way. So the first impression was a little bewildering, and I find that some of the symphonies are still difficult to get a grasp of, formally speaking. Like No. 7: I have conducted it many, many times, and I have also heard it many times, but I still find that it takes quite a bit of energy for me to know where I am exactly within that form.
Do you remember when you heard the music of Gustav Mahler for the first time?
Metzmacher: Oh my God. No, I don’t. I think the first time I heard Mahler was when I was conducting it, or maybe just before. I did the Rückert-Lieder first you know: it was long ago and I was very young and it was with Margaret Price. Let me think – that’s probably not true. I think I heard Mahler earlier in the context of Ives, which I was always very interested in, because there’s this story that when Mahler came back from New York he had an Ives score in his suitcase and wanted to bring him to Europe, and then unfortunately he died. Because there are some connections between Ives and Mahler, and I think I first encountered the music of Mahler through Ives. I think so, and I think it was most probably the 1st Symphony
Do you remember the first time you heard the music of Gustav Mahler?
Nagano: The first time I heard Gustav Mahler’s music was indirectly through the television. I was a very young boy, and it was in the early 1960s, and I heard the second movement of the 1st Symphony explained, and then conducted, by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. And it was on a very, well, what now has become a very famous television series, called The Young Persons Concerts, and for many children like myself, who lived in rural America, far away from the big cities, where we didn’t have regular access to big symphony orchestras and big opera houses, this was a tremendous outreach programme. And using high technology at the time – television – that Mr. Bernstein employed, so that he could somehow share with a very, very broad public of young people the very special qualities of music. So in this particular broadcast it was, as I said, the second movement of the 1st Symphony: maestro Bernstein explained in a very general analysis on the piano, and then we heard the second movement. I must have been 8 years old at this time. (more…)
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