Was sind das für Manuskripte, die Sie da gerade vor sich liegen haben und studieren?

Das sind Anmerkungen von Alban Berg zu seiner „Lulu“-Suite, die ich neu bekommen habe. Eintragungen in die Partitur, die sehr interessant sind!

Sie haben diese Partitur von Berg seit 1964 schon so oft dirigiert. Ändern diese Eintragungen etwas an Ihrer Interpretation?

Ja, natürlich! Man findet immer etwas Neues. Sehen Sie zum Beispiel diese Bläserstelle: „leierkastenmäßig“ steht da. Das bedeutet für mich, dass dieses Thema etwas „wienerisch“ gespielt werden muss.

Sie studieren die Partituren sehr genau.

Ja, man lernt ungeheuer viel dadurch. Oft gerade auch durch die Korrekturen, die die Komponisten selbst eingefügt haben. Mahler schreibt in seinen Partituren ja über sein halbes Leben, über seine Eifersüchte und seine große Liebe. Das ist sehr aufschlussreich. Der arme Mahler hat so viel gelitten. Seine Ehefrau Alma war nicht so einfach . . .

In der jüngeren Zeit hat man ja ihre Kompositionen entdeckt und behauptet, sie sei von Gustav Mahler unterdrückt worden.

Wie finden Sie denn die Kompositionen von Alma Mahler?

Nicht wirklich bedeutend.

Eben. In Edinburgh habe ich früher einmal ein Mahler-Festival gemacht, wo auch einige Kompositionen von Alma gespielt wurden. Da ist mir klargeworden, dass sie eine gute Studentin war – aber mehr nicht. Sie glaubte jedoch wirklich, dass sie die Größte wäre. Das lag eher an ihrem Charakter als an ihrem Talent.

Hat das Mahler-Jahr neue Erkenntnisse für Sie gebracht?

Ja, aber so wie jedes andere Jahr auch. Jubiläen sind immer nur ein Anlass.

An Mahlers Musik hat sich immer wieder der musikologische Streit entzündet, ob es sich um „absolute“ oder um „Programmmusik“ handele. Hat diese Unterscheidung einen Sinn?

Meiner Ansicht nach kann das jeder so sehen, wie er möchte. Für mich ist das einfach wunderbare, große Musik, die ich liebe. Dafür brauche ich kein Etikett.

Und wie gehen Sie mit Mahlers programmatischen Eintragungen um? Nützen die etwas für die Interpretation?

Man kommt dadurch schon auf neue Ideen. Aber das ist ohnehin das Schöne an den großen Komponisten, dass man in ihren Werken unentwegt neue Aspekte entdeckt. Große Musik ist unerschöpflich. Es gibt in der Musik, genau wie im Leben, keine Grenzen. Daher versuche ich immer, eine Partitur jedes Mal wieder so studieren, wie beim ersten Mal. Alles andere wäre zu einfach – und auch sehr langweilig.

Bei der Endrunde zum Deutschen Dirigentenpreis ist mir gerade wieder aufgefallen, auf wie viele Dinge es beim Dirigieren gleichzeitig ankommt: Partiturkenntnis, Schlagtechnik, gestische und mimische Kommunikation. Wie lernt man das?

Der Wunsch, Karriere machen zu wollen, ist sicherlich die falsche Voraussetzung. Wichtig ist vor allem eine tiefe Liebe zur Musik. Mir hat Karajan, der wie ein Vater für mich war, sehr wichtige Ratschläge gegeben. Er hatte mich mit dem damaligen Radio Symphonie Orchester Berlin gehört und mich daraufhin nach Salzburg eingeladen. Dort führte ich mit den Wiener Philharmonikern auf meinen Wunsch hin die 2. Symphonie von Mahler auf. So fing alles an. Karajan hat mir immer geraten, nicht zu viel zu machen, nur zu dirigieren, wenn ich mir ganz sicher bin. Er warnte mich davor, einen Fehler zu begehen, den er als junger Mann einmal gemacht hatte: mit einem unsicheren Gefühl dennoch ans Pult zu treten.

Hören Sie sich Ihre alten Aufnahmen manchmal an?

Ja. Manchmal ist es nicht schlecht, manchmal schrecklich.

Ihr Verständnis von Mahler hat sich also verändert?

Natürlich. Ich bin immer tiefer eingedrungen.

Gibt es zeitgenössische Komponisten, die Sie interessieren?

Als ich das Festival „Wien Modern“ gründete, habe ich mit Nono, Boulez, Berio und Stockhausen zusammengearbeitet. Dann war da noch der junge Komponist Wolfgang Rihm. Auch mit ihm arbeite ich gerne. Er ist ein so intelligenter Komponist und ein so gebildeter Mensch. Auch mit Henze habe ich einiges gemacht.

“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

]]> http://mahler.universaledition.com/alan-gilbert-gustav-mahler/feed/ 0 http://mahler.universaledition.com/video-streams-from-the-leipzig-mahler-festival/ http://mahler.universaledition.com/video-streams-from-the-leipzig-mahler-festival/#comments Tue, 24 May 2011 10:47:28 +0000 Universal Edition http://mahler.universaledition.com/?p=1214 Arte Live Web’s video streams from the Leipzig Mahler Festival are online for some time still.

Watch full concert recordings of the London Symphony Orchestra, The Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, among others.

All videos are now also available on YouTube. And they are still online for all to watch here and on Vimeo.com.

And finally, there are more coming soon. Watch this space …

]]> http://mahler.universaledition.com/gustav-mahler-100-years-after-his-death/feed/ 0 http://mahler.universaledition.com/100-years-tomorrow/ http://mahler.universaledition.com/100-years-tomorrow/#comments Tue, 17 May 2011 19:23:49 +0000 Universal Edition http://mahler.universaledition.com/?p=1195 In advance of the 100th anniversary of Mahler’s death tomorrow, here are a few pointers to activities, concerts and reports to be found across the internet.

The German Theatre Museum is showing the exhibition Gustav Mahler – Composer, Opera Director, Conductor until 18 September. The exhibition features the video interviews made by Universal Edition.

The Leipzig Mahler Festival starts today at the Gewandhaus with Riccardo Chailly conducting the 2nd Symphony. All concerts will be broadcast live on the internet by ARTE and the MDR.

Alex Ross has a round up of Mahler performances available on the internet, including Christoph Eschenbach’s series of the Mahler symphonies with the Orchestre de Paris.

Gavin Plumley has been charting the last days of Mahler’s life on his Entartete Musik Blog.

Read more at the Entartete Musik Blog

Read the full interviews with Riccardo Chailly, Herbert Blomstedt, Manfred Honeck, Antonio Pappano, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Andris Nelsons and many more.

The exhibition shows a fascinating collection of material from the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna and the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in Paris. Many of the objects are on display for the first time ever.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a facsimile of the complete manuscript score of the 4th Symphony. As the music plays from loudspeakers (Jascha Horenstein’s 1970 recording with the London Symphony Orchestra) lights illuminate the relevant page in the score.

Curator Pierre Korzilius spoke to Universal Edition about the exhibition.

The exhibition is on until 29 May 2011.

Press reports:

Naturbursche und Musiktyrann (Deutschlandradio Kultur)
Gustav Mahlers Leid an der Seine (Die Presse)

“Mahler must have been a great man!”

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.

Did Mahler feature in your musical education?

Blomstedt: Not really … what I know about Mahler I learnt myself at a later age, when I was 30 or 40. I was not interested in Mahler when I was young. It was too big a challenge to come close to Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms – Bruckner was very close to me from the beginning. I only started to really become fascinated by Mahler’s music when I was in Dresden, which was when I was 50 years old. I played my first Mahler symphony in Dresden with the Staatskapelle. It was the 2nd Symphony and I loved it, and I was disappointed that the orchestra did not like it. This was in 1975, 1977 or 1978, perhaps, I don’t remember exactly. The orchestra played wonderfully and the choir was also wonderful – I think it was a very good performance. But I noted that the orchestra was like ‘Mmm, yes, yes, not bad, but not really great.’ The orchestra had no feelings for it – it mirrored a little bit my own experience as a young man. But it was in Dresden that I started to understand more why his music was the way it was. You can say what you want about the GDR; it was not a very nice country, but they did a few nice things, also in terms of culture. One of them was that they published quite a lot of Yiddish literature. It was part of their propaganda. They wanted to distance themselves from the Nazis of course – who wouldn’t want to do that [laughs]? So they wanted to repair that part of their history and they were interested in Yiddish culture and literature and published a lot of it. This was when I read Yiddish literature for the first time by Sholem Aleichem and there were wonderful illustrations of these stories by mostly Russian Jews who were supported in the GDR, like Anatoli Kaplan – wonderful illustrations. And when I saw these illustrations and read these stories, I recognized what I had heard in the 1st Symphony [sings Jewish melody], which I thought was so utterly vulgar and terrible – how could a serious man write something like that? – now I suddenly understood that this was what he had heard when he was a young man in the Ghetto; country fiddlers playing for weddings and funerals, the same musicians playing with a great feeling of sorrow and tragedy. Suddenly, I understood that it wasn’t that he didn’t know how to write decent music, but it was more or less a quote from his experience. And of course it was a tragic experience and I sympathize with people who have tragic backgrounds, so I started to love this music. And I think that today, the Staatskapelle is playing Mahler symphonies with great understanding and with great love, I am sure. But it took time for them too, as it took time for me. So that was the background of my coming to Mahler.

The difficulties were only the exotic materials or were there other reasons why you didn’t like Mahler at first?

Blomstedt: No, that was my main objection [laughs]. Of course, when I studied the scores more closely, I realized what great compositions they were and how clever he was as a musician and as a composer. These so-called “vulgar” quotations were part of his world and he wanted to bring that whole world into his music, sort of like confessions. I think this is the case for most composers; their works are confessions of their lives. I felt sympathy for his background.

But how utterly different that was from other big symphonies written at the same time – by Jean Sibelius who would never have written something like that and still wrote symphonies with enormous integrity. But Sibelius never quoted folk melodies, there is something similar in his work and his music is of course very influenced by his Finnish background, but as personal as his symphonies are, they are objective truths. They are not only outpourings of his sentiments. It’s not less personal than Mahler’s music, but it’s personal on another level. For Sibelius the big Gods were Bach and Beethoven, and he wrote his symphonies with the same spirit as Beethoven – they are very different from Beethoven’s, but written in the same spirit; not telling the whole world about his anxieties, his hopes and his visions, but more in a dream world where he tries to combine his impressions of Finnish nature with the symphonic greatness of a Beethoven symphony. Sibelius was a synesthetic – when he saw colors he heard notes and music, and vice versa; when he heard music he went ‘Oh, that’s green’ and ‘that’s blue’. This is something that is difficult to imagine for someone who does not have these experiences, but I think it’s good to know that about Sibelius – his impressions of nature gave him immediate musical impressions.

They met, as you know, Sibelius and Mahler early in the 20th century, in 1907. They had a meeting, but of course they had completely different views. I think they respected each other very much as great musicians, but Mahler said: ‘No, that’s not my world! I want my symphonies to take in the whole world; also the vulgar, also the country fiddler has a place there, alongside the most lofty visions and thoughts about philosophical themes, about God, about eternity and resurrection and all this. Sibelius created an ideal world of his own that is very separate from the streets of Helsinki or the streets of Vienna, while in Mahler’s music you can hear very well what is going on in the street, in the pubs as well as in the Musikverein and in the churches. He takes it all in, it’s all there. And since it is so extremely emotional, I think it appeals to the public of today to a very great extent.

Recently Simon Rattle said that in the late 1960s, Mahler was considered to be somewhat of a joke in Britain. You conducted a lot in the States, do you remember this time when Mahler was not taken seriously?

Blomstedt: Not from America, but I remember it from my youth in Sweden. I was not dissimilar to my contemporaries; nobody really liked Mahler. They thought his music was interesting, but not really touching. I think this started to change in 1960, the 100th anniversary of Mahler, with the big Mahler festival here in Vienna. This was the beginning of a fantastic odyssey of his music all around the world. In America, his music caught on very fast, no doubt because so many Jews were living there. They felt very close to this music, the great Jewish musicians who had emigrated to America, and that helped to bring it close to the public. Also, great parts of the audience are Jewish; it’s a wonderful audience with a great sensitivity for music. And from there it spread to everywhere. Today, the love of Mahler is not a Jewish thing [laughs], it’s universal. I am very happy that it is like that and of course Mahler prophesized that himself – he said ‘My time will come!’, and he was right.

The name of Leonard Bernstein is closely associated with the Mahler renaissance and at the same time he has been blamed for overpowering his music. What would you say about this overly emotional style of interpreting Mahler? What is the right approach to Mahler?

Blomstedt: Well, I am not the one to judge this, but I think Mahler can easily be misused if one is ultra-emotional. Certainly, Bernstein was an artist who was enormously emotional and he had a right to be like that; that was Mr. Bernstein! I knew him pretty well personally and he was not a showman, but a naturally theatrical person. He did not put on something to create an effect, he was like that! He was completely genuine! And in this respect I think he was the ideal Mahler interpreter and he did very much to foster the Mahler ‘Triumphzug’, the triumphal development of Mahler in the greater public.

I think that Mahler’s own way of conducting was not like that. Of course, I think that the young Mahler was different from the mature Mahler, but the mature Mahler was an extremely well-controlled conductor. No gymnastics, no histrionics on the stage; he was calm, but with an enormous methodology – he asked for the orchestra to completely give themselves over to the music and to the demands of him as a conductor. And it was natural for him to get exactly what he wanted because of his stature as a person; not only as a fascinating performer, but as a person. He must have simply been a great man. Many of the observations one hears or reads about Mahler’s conducting go in this direction. The young Mahler is said not to have been extremely gymnastical and so on, but remember, Mahler died when he was 51. So he was not an old man; you cannot say that as an old man he got calmer or finally calmed down – he was in the prime of his life. And even then he was a well-composed conductor.

I have been asked on some occasions to act as a judge in competitions and I hear young conductors conduct Mahler – it’s almost always a catastrophe. They make a big impression by being extremely emotional and in the next round they play a Haydn menuetto or movements from a Haydn symphony and they absolutely do not know what to do with it [laughs] – they can only bathe in their emotions … and they don’t know the music very well. I think one should rather have Haydn competitions instead of Mahler competitions to really train conductors to conduct the music and not only use it as a vehicle to show their emotions. Certainly, Mahler must be played with a complete understanding, with a great personal involvement, also emotionally. But in order to get the control and the relations between the different parts of this great music, you have to keep a cool head and at the same time be completely involved.

Did you talk with Bernstein about Mahler?

Blomstedt: Not about Mahler, no.

Did you talk with other conductors about Mahler? Or are there other conductors that influenced you? You probably listened to Willem Mengelberg or Bruno Walter?

Blomstedt: No, I didn’t. What I know about Mahler comes only from my studying the score. I did not study Mahler with a teacher. It was so late in my career, I started studying Mahler when I was 50 – I was as old as Mahler was when he died. I love his music; I am very much involved with it. I have not played so much Mahler in the last 4 to 5 years because I conducted so much Bruckner. Perhaps that is a little bit the missionary part of me – everybody plays Mahler, they don’t need me, but Bruckner is still so little understood. So I have concentrated on Bruckner these past few years, but I have also done some Mahler and I love it, especially the 9th Symphony, the 6th Symphony, the 2nd Symphony and the 1st Symphony and the songs, of course – they are fabulous, I think he is almost at his greatest in his early songs, they are fantastic, the ‘Kindertotenlieder’, ‘Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen’ – that appeals very much to me and shows another side of Mahler that is perhaps less known; the more restricted Mahler, the more internal Mahler. Remember, they are very small; no cowbells, no hammers, no choirs of a thousand people. They are very, very small and still there is an enormously intense expression. This moves me very much – when a composer with small means can say the maximum. When you have enormous means, it doesn’t appeal to me as much, compared with little means. For that reason I love the ‘Kindertotenlieder’ much more than the 8th Symphony, for instance. I have done the 8th Symphony a few times and I love it, but when I conduct these early songs afterwards, I think ‘This is the real great Mahler’.

So would you agree that Mahler comes from the song?

Blomstedt: I think so, yes. He was one with the voice. He wrote very little chamber music, as we know, he was an orchestra man, but he was also a man of the opera. He constantly worked with singers, and I am sure he worked with some wonderful singers who gave him ideas about what the human voice can express. It’s so moving, this music …

When you started to study Mahler you were already a great Bruckner conductor and you knew the Bruckner scores very well. Do you think Bruckner influenced Mahler, bearing in mind that Mahler wanted to study with Bruckner and did indeed study briefly with him?

Blomstedt: We know of course that Mahler studied with Bruckner, but it must have been for a very short time. I think that Mahler’s symphonies would have been impossible without Bruckner’s music. The scope, the greatness of thought surely influenced Mahler, and Mahler of course performed some of Bruckner’s music, in his own way, with lots of changes and cuts, which was the standard at that time. Today, it would be a crime to do that, but we should not judge Mahler by today’s standards, but by the standards of his own day. And after all, he was one of the first conductors to perform the 6th Symphony, although he didn’t perform all the movements and made big cuts.

When I compare the two, what surprises me is how modern Bruckner was compared to Mahler. What Bruckner wrote in 1868 is much more daring than what Mahler wrote in 1890, harmonically speaking. And he did it with the same orchestra as Beethoven used; not more instruments. The harmonically daring language of his 1st Symphony is just unbelievable. When you hear Mahler’s 1st Symphony, it sounds very commonplace, harmonically speaking. It has of course lots of new kinds of expressions and there is a whole new world opening up already in the 1st Symphony that Bruckner would never have written, but, harmonically speaking, Bruckner is much more advanced than Mahler. Mahler perhaps in 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, by the 10th Symphony, would have approached something like this, maybe also in the 9th Symphony there were some harmonically daring progressions. But the Mahler of the 1890s was not going in that direction. He developed other parts of his musical language that really made up Mahler. Mahler did not have to be more modern; he had to be more Mahler [laughs]. So it’s not that Mahler was not as advanced as Bruckner, but, harmonically speaking, Bruckner was very innovative and daring. The clashes in the 9th Symphony are unbelievable!

But I am so glad that we have both. As different as they are, we love them both and we cannot do without them.

From a practical point of view, are there differences when you rehearse Mahler and Bruckner?

Blomstedt: There are enormous differences. When I conduct Bruckner, I always feel that this is the truth, some objective truth. It’s very personal music and it’s full of emotions, but it’s not Bruckner’s emotions. It’s like Beethoven’s music – he speaks for us all. Beethoven was not telling us about his being afraid, about becoming deaf or of his anguish. He speaks for man as a species. I feel the same with Bruckner; he speaks for man as a species. Whereas Mahler speaks absolutely for himself and he shows us that this is also part of you. We can have sympathy for him and he appeals to us ‘Oh, yes, I have something similar in me’. And that’s why we like him so much; ‘He suffered just as I do’. But Bruckner’s music is on another kind of level. It’s very personal, but it is not so subjective. This is why I feel with Bruckner’s music you get a sense of the truth; this is like it is. It is real. One of the most wonderful passages in Mahler’s music is the one where he gives an idea of an ideal world, of ideal happiness, in heaven – in his ‘Wunderhorn-Lieder’, ‘I long to be in heaven’. And you have a wonderful feeling that this is where you want to be. But with Bruckner’s music, you are there! And it’s real, you know! It’s not only a vision that you forget three bars later. Mahler’s says that it’s something to be hopeful for, but it’s not real, it doesn’t exist, but you must not forget to dream about it and hope for it and work towards it, but really, it does not exist. Whereas Bruckner creates a situation where it does exist, and it’s here!

They are very different these composers and they appeal to different sides of our personalities.

But when you rehearse, are you looking for the wide bow with Bruckner and for the mosaic with Mahler? Or is the technical aspect almost the same with both composers?

Blomstedt: Well, with both composers you have to have the view of the whole thing before you start painting details. This is as true for Mahler as it is for Bruckner. Mahler’s music may seem to be more kaleidoscopic, a series of snapshots. Perhaps this is also why it appeals so much to today’s public. Today’s public doesn’t have so much patience; they want to be excited all the time. It’s like when you’re watching TV – you have three seconds of this and two seconds of that, and when you have ten seconds of something, you think it’s boring [laughs]. Mahler’s music is always changing and this is part of why it fascinates us so much. Because we know that our existence is so fragmental and so torn. But Bruckner’s music tells us there is also a line, that there is a vision there, that there is a hope for eternity. For Mahler, eternity is only a dream, but for Bruckner it’s real.

But in order to conduct both composers’ work, you have to be completely familiar with the whole scope before you even start rehearsing it.

Did Mahler anticipate the catastrophes of the 20th century?

Blomstedt: I think so, but I think Bruckner did too. Listen to the Adagio of the 9th Symphony – you have all the catastrophes of World War I and II in it. These clashes – Bruckner was of course no Marxist, but his music shows that if you follow this direction it will end in utter pain and catastrophe. Like close to the end of the Adagio of the 9th Symphony, where with utter consequence the lines clash in a painful expression [lets out a loud shriek], and it breaks together. The beginning of this movement sounds like Schönberg [sings a passage], it’s almost twelve-tone music, it’s remarkable – in 1890, 1892, 1894. He died in 1896. It’s amazing how close this is to atonal music. So in this respect, Bruckner was also very forward-looking. But Mahler, with his special psyche, was so much torn between extremes. Not being at home any place, always a foreigner. Here in Vienna he was not an Austrian, he was a Bohemian; he was not really Austrian, he was a Jew, he was always different and didn’t belong anywhere. And this feeling of estrangement is perhaps typical of the whole century that followed. So in that way, he was prefiguring a century when people were torn from their existence in the most awful way. The Holocaust is the most dramatic example, but there are many other examples of people being thrown out and being murdered, for instance in Turkey. And it continues even today. So I think even Mahler’s fate as an individual was very much prefiguring all the tragedies of the 20th century.

Do you see a connection between his life and his art?

Blomstedt: Sure. He would not have composed the way he did if he hadn’t had this background.

How do you see his personality?

Blomstedt: He must have been a wonderful man. He was a difficult man when it came to art; he demanded absolute fidelity to what he was aiming at, and he was not prepared to make any compromises in art. Of course, life taught him that things don’t always develop the way you want them to. He felt great tragedies in his personal life – children died, his wife deserted him; everybody was against him in Vienna, but still loved him. It was a terrible, terrible fate. That a person with his background could create such great music is a miracle. Just as it’s a miracle that Bruckner created such great music being the man that he was – in many ways a very simple man, not at all with the urban excesses that were available to Mahler. Bruckner was basically a monastery man. But in the monastery he had fantastic visions. And of course he would not have been able to write these symphonies had he not been an idealist with Beethoven’s symphonies in mind. I think the influence of Wagner is spoken of so much and it is obvious, but the influence of Beethoven, although it is not spoken of so much, is also very, very obvious. His symphonies are ethical confessions [laughs], like Beethoven’s symphonies. A document of humans striving towards affection, with all the limitations we have, but with an uncompromising attitude to this ambition.

Do you see a Wagner influence on Mahler as well?

Blomstedt: Yes, of course, without Wagner there would be no Mahler. And I am sure he was a great Wagner conductor and he knew his works very well. But it’s interesting that both these composers, since we are pairing them all the time, were not really opera composers [laughs]. Wagner played a great role for them, but Mahler only had some curious attempts at arranging opera and his world was the symphony. And so was Bruckner’s. Bruckner was in the monastery, he was an organist, but his world was the symphony. He has written some wonderful church music, but compared with his symphonies this is a minor part of his output. It’s great music, wonderful, he was a wonderful organist, but he wrote no organ music; he improvised. There are only a few pieces left that could be played even on a harmonium – some very simple pieces.

His organ was the orchestra …

Blomstedt: His world was the orchestra! And he had this vision without having an orchestra at his disposal. Mahler had an orchestra at his disposal, it was his everyday work. He heard what was possible, he was a fantastic conductor. During his lifetime, he was an admired conductor, I think he was also hated by some who didn’t like him, but generally he was a very admired and feared leader, so it was quite natural for him that he would make his best efforts in symphonies. But with Bruckner you would never predict that he would develop into a man of the symphony. I think this is also important to bear in mind when you judge Bruckner. You put him into a corner – he was a church man, he was very religious, he was very pious; we admire that and we would like to be like that ourselves, but unfortunately we cannot, this is time past … Bruckner was a real genius with the orchestra. To say something of this quality with the same orchestra that Beethoven used … It’s true that he used some tubas at the end, but generally his symphonies had just a pair of woodwinds, three trumpets and four horns and three trombones, and that’s it. And it sounds completely different to the symphonies of his predecessors.

Mahler was of course an extreme romantic and as a conductor he also wanted to see what is possible. There are things in his orchestra which he found that nobody else did, he enlarged the orchestra and felt no bounds there; he felt no shame in using the most diverse instruments – he was simply experimenting. In this respect, he was also a child of his time. He said to his students ‘If something in my works does not work in terms of balance, change it’, or ‘If you feel that the oboe is too weak here, use the clarinet instead, and if it’s still too weak, double it, triple it, or put the piccolo on top’ and he did not only give his students free hand to do it, but he said that they must do it! This is completely foreign to our feeling today where everything Mahler wrote is sacrosanct – you don’t change a note, you don’t change one instrument. The job of the conductor is to change the sound balances so that everything can be maximally clearly heard and so on, but you don’t change the colours; that’s a crime!

So when we judge Mahler we have to take him as he was at his time; this was normal at his time. Remember, Brahms did similar things. Brahms, in this house, was the editor of the Schubert symphonies and he did not hesitate to put in some extra bars of his own in Schubert’s music, without telling anybody [laughs]. There was no critical commentary explaining why he had made certain choices. He just did it. That was part of the standard of his time. You do what you think is in the interest of the composer. We think differently today.

And I think this is interesting and in no way diminishes the value of what they did.

In today’s newspaper, you read about Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg – he copied a journalist in his doctoral dissertation. What a crime! And he didn’t tell it [laughs]! At the time of Brahms and Mahler that would have been customary and happened every day [laughs]. So it’s good to have a historical overview of these things, to calm you down a little bit. I respect these men very much, they were great models for us and I am glad we had them. This was more than a hundred years ago as for Bruckner and this year it’s exactly one hundred years ago that we lost Mahler … where are they today?

What would you have asked Mahler?

Blomstedt: I don’t have nearly as many questions for Mahler as I’d have for Bruckner because Mahler was much more detailed when he wrote his scores. There is hardly one note that doesn’t have a special marking – a dot, an accent, a wedge or a dynamic marking. Sometimes there are two, three or even four markings for one note. So you can pretty well read his thoughts when you read the score. Bruckner was not so detailed in some of his works, but perhaps more than many people – much more detailed than Beethoven or Mozart and so on. But for me, Bruckner is more enigmatic than Mahler. I feel that Mahler’s message is pretty clear to me. This does not mean that I know it for all times. Tomorrow, I might have other ideas. It’s like that with any great music; you can never come close enough to it.

Of course, I would have loved to meet both of them. But I am afraid if I had the privilege of meeting them, I would just get numb and admire them … ‘Is this really you?’ [laughs].

What did Mahler want?

Blomstedt: Well, he certainly wanted to stir our emotions and to make us take part in his world, which was very intense. And to share his loneliness. He was not really an outcast because he had many admirers, but I think he never completely felt at home. Only when making music could he really express himself and only then was his world complete. As soon as the rehearsal or the concert was over, he felt that he was lonely – ‘only me and a few people that perhaps sympathize with me’ – it might have been a thousand or 3000 or 5000 people, but not many that really understood him. I think that he wanted to try to communicate with people.

This feeling of loneliness I think is not foreign to any musician – we are so specialized, we can share our world with very few people. We are happy when a thousand, 2000, 3000 people listen to us, or when 100,000 buy our recordings, but it does not really make us less lonely. After the concert, there is this emptiness there – after we’ve had a great emotional experience, a great intellectual experience coupled with an emotional experience, there is this great feeling of excitement and fulfilment, but when it’s over, after 10 minutes or 15 minutes, you’re alone. I think that is the basics of any musician. And we’re so happy when we can find one person or three other people, when we can play quartets and we have more or less the same idea of the same music and we can share this with at least three other people. Or in a great orchestra, when you understand everybody likes this music – they might have different ideas about it – but they love to be together and are happy that even just these one hundred people have found each other for these few hours to have this experience. And when that’s over, you are alone again.

I think it was Goethe who said in a wonderful commentary that he felt that the whole world was like a desert. But then suddenly you find somebody with whom you can share your thoughts and feelings on special subjects, and suddenly the desert starts to bloom and is like an oasis [laughs]. And when this person is not there anymore, then it’s a desert again.

The basic temperament of a musician is melancholic. He’s happy when others are happy, he’s sad when others are sad; he is very influenceable. He has to have a lot of empathy. Without this empathy you cannot be a musician, you cannot really be an interpreter of somebody else’s thoughts. But the other side of the coin is that you’re lonely.

I experienced that myself. I came to Sweden when I was 2 years old. But when I was 5 years old, I went to Finland. And in Finland in the 1930s, Swedes were considered people that you wanted to get rid of. The cultural elite of Finland at the time was Swedish because Finland had been a Swedish province for a hundred or so years. Remember, Sibelius spoke practically no Finnish, he spoke Swedish. The cultural leadership was all Swedish. Finnish was spoken by the peasants in the provinces. Today, it’s completely different, but in the 1930s, Finland was a young country. When I came to Finland it had been independent for 15 years. It was a young country and wanted to be Finnish! So I, as a Swede, was pushed out. I went to a Swedish school and I was afraid of the Finnish boys; I felt persecuted. After 5 years in Finland, we moved back to Sweden and then of course I spoke with a Finnish accent, so they called me ‘the Finn’ [laughs]. I felt so bad; I was never really at home. In Finland, I didn’t belong because I was the Swede and in Sweden, I didn’t belong because I was the Finn, and then at school, I didn’t like the music that others liked. I liked symphonies and quartets – ‘what a strange person’ – and I went to church when nobody else went to church there. This feeling of being alone is very close to me, I know it very well. So I can sympathize with Mahler who was always alone, he was never really at home – only when he was in his own world. I feel great sympathy with that and today I can easily identify with Mahler’s world.

We know that during his childhood, Mahler would hide for days in the woods because he was afraid of his violent father. Could we say that his music echoes these experiences?

Blomstedt: I am sure it left its marks on him, also in his extreme desire to please, to be at one with his surroundings and to be accepted. This is also a great difference to Bruckner, which is very interesting. I don’t think Bruckner ever, in his innermost, wanted to be accepted. It was something that his friends and students talked him into: ‘You must do it like this in order to be more popular. You should change your scores to be more like Wagner. And if you don’t do it, we’ll do it for you!’ and Bruckner said ‘Fine, you may do it, but that’s not valid for later times. As I have done, this is the original text. You may do it, but I wash my hands of it. What I have written, I have written’. So I think Bruckner did not have this desire to please his surroundings. And the reason of course was that he wanted to please God. That was his only authority; it was not society, it was not the opera public, it was not even the symphony public – he wanted to please his God. That made for another kind of person. It didn’t make him a saint, but another kind of person than Mahler. It’s very interesting to compare this. I think they were both extremely religious persons, but in very different ways. Mahler longed for God, as he once wrote ‘I belong to Heaven! I came from there, you must let me in!’ There was this certain longing for him to be accepted, to belong. He certainly had his longings and desires that were also driving him to work like he did.

Whom did Mahler want to please?

Blomstedt: I think really himself, which is not bad. I think that in art, he was a great egoist. And I think an artist has to be an egoist to a certain extent in his art, he must believe in himself in order to have the self-confidence to create something great. But I think Mahler was also a great person. He loved people, he loved his family. Not only his wonderful wife, with a passionate love, but he was also very attached to his family. He lost great parts of his family; I think some of his brothers and sisters died at a young age. He was always close to death.

Where would Mahler have gone?

Blomstedt: That’s an interesting question. Judging by what we know from the 10th Symphony, he was certainly going into a period of an extended harmonic language. I don’t think he would have reached the same dead end as Sibelius who simply felt he could not go on any longer and just stopped. His own self-criticism became too great and destroyed the 8th Symphony. Mahler had an even bigger ego than Sibelius and he was so convinced by his own talent. It is not possible to predict, but I think he would have continued all the time. One cannot predict that. But it’s an interesting question because that was the time when Schönberg had his solution, Stravinsky had his solution and today, simply everything is allowed.

It’s interesting that the 9th Symphony is an ‘Abschieds’-Symphony, a farewell symphony. It’s not clear that Mahler knew at the time that he was going to die so soon. Some conductors say that the 9th Symphony is a symphony of death …

Blomstedt: It’s definitely a farewell symphony. ‘Leb wohl, leb wohl, leb wohl’. This ending, and not only the ending, the whole fourth movement, from the very start, is so emotional, you cannot go any further. It’s so rich, exploring even just the string sounds … After the first movement, and from the very outset, it’s a farewell [sings] ‘Leb wohl’. But he was accustomed to saying goodbye all his life; goodbye to his brothers and sisters who died; goodbye to his wife who went astray; goodbye to his child that died; goodbye to Vienna; goodbye to his wonderful opera house and wonderful singers; to the orchestra; goodbye, goodbye. And also the American episode was so short.

So it’s a comment on his personal life?

Blomstedt: It fits perfectly with his fate [laughs]. Do you know this novel by Bernhard Kellermann; it’s called ‘Der Tunnel’ [The Tunnel]? It was very popular in the early 1920s. It was a bestseller and perchance I got a copy. It’s a love story about a young lady who marries a civil engineer who dreams about building a tunnel under the Atlantic, from New York to Paris, the whole way – a fantastic project, of course, and they start to do it. That’s why it’s called ‘The Tunnel’. But the first chapter is a musical chapter. They are newly married, this lady who loves music and this civil engineer who doesn’t understand music at all but goes with his wife, and they go for their first concert to Madison Square Garden, which is this enormous place, and Mahler is conducting. The background is true. And according to the novel, they sit in a loge and the lady is fascinated by the music and by Mahler’s conducting, but the engineer has no feeling for music and instead looks at the building. When he sees how these loges are built, he figures out how they are constructed and how various problems are solved, so he’s not hearing the music at all. Different worlds [laughs]! Very, very interesting!

And Mahler is conducting …

Blomstedt: Yes, Mahler is conducting.

What a waste!

Blomstedt: You should read the first chapter … [laughs].

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler, Universal Edition
Transcript: Agnes Vukovich
17.2.2011, Vienna
© Universal Edition

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