To celebrate the Mahler anniversary years 2010 and 2011, as well as the conductor’s 70th birthday, Christoph Eschenbach and the Orchestre de Paris have made high definition video recordings of the Mahler series they presented this season available online.

All symphonies as well as the interview Christoph Eschenbach gave to Universal Edition are now online.

See the concerts online

“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”.

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The BBC Philharmonic and Hallé’s combined performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony at The Bridgewater Hall has won a South Bank Sky Arts Award.

The project was one of the highlights of the city’s six month long Mahler in Manchester Festival, in which the BBC Philharmonic and the Halle joined forces with The Bridgewater Hall and Manchester Camerata for a city-wide tribute.

Along with the symphonies, the orchestras performed new works commissioned for the series, including Friedrich Cerha’s Like a Tragicomedy and Luke Bedford’s At Three and Two.

Norman Lebrecht and Alex Ross report that the manuscript of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is now online at the Morgan Library website.

Also available online are the manuscripts of Der Spielmann and Hochzeitsstück from Das Klagende Lied.

The Mahler series of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome continues in 2011 with the following concerts

Orchestra e coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, conducted by Antonio Pappano

January 2011
Sat 8 | Mon 10 | Tues 11
Symphony No. 6

March 2011
Sat 12 | Mon 14 | Tues 15
Symphony No. 1

April 2011
Sat 2 | Mon 4 | Tues 5
Symphony No. 9

October 2011
Sat 22 | Sun 23 | Mon 24

with the China National Chorus and soloists Manuela Uhl, Christine Brewer, Meagan Miller, Sara Mingardo, Maria Radner, Nikolai Schukoff, Christopher Maltman, Georg Zeppenfeld
Symphony No. 8

November 2011
Sat 12 | Mon 14 | Tues 15
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Symphony No. 7

In addition, further concerts will be given by the Mariinsky Orchestra together with the Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, conducted by Valery Gergiev:

10 November 2011
Symphony No. 9

11 November 2011
Symphony No. 4

View the full Mahler brochure

In our latest Mahler interview, journalist, broadcaster and musicologist Norman Lebrecht talks to UE about Gustav Mahler’s life and music.

Read Norman Lebrecht’s blog: Slipped disc

Deutsche Grammophon have just released Mahler – The People’s Edition, a 13 CD release of the symphonies chosen by their listeners from the rich DG  and Decca catalogue.

The line-up of conductors includes Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, Riccardo Chailly, Carlo Maria Giulini, Herbert von Karajan, Rafael Kubelik, Zubin Mehta and Georg Solti.

Listen to samples, purchase and download on the Deutsche Grammophon website.

Mahler’s relationship with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra began in 1892 with a concert of songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and continues to this day.

Under the title Seine Zeit ist gekommen (His time has come) the orchestra is now presenting an exhibition with information about the life and work of Gustav Mahler. Of special interest are the various “stations” of the Mahler tradition of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Seine Zeit ist gekommen – from 5 December 2010 until 31 January 2011 in the Foyer of the Philharmonie Berlin.

Full transcripts of our Mahler interviews with Mariss Jansons and David Zinman are now online.

“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.

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