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.
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.
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.
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