“Mahler must have been a great man”

Do you remember the first time you heard Mahler’s music?

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 Issay Dobrowen conducted it very well, but I was right in the 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 realised that Mahler was great music.

[...]

Find the full interview in Gustav Mahler: The Conductors’ Interviews
Edited by Wolfgang Schaufler
ISBN: 978-3-7024-7162-0
ISMN: 979-0-008-08493-5
Order number: UE26311 (German Edition: UE26310)

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

“Mahler is more contemporary now than in 1910”

Do you remember the first time you heard Mahler’s music?

Pons: It was at the Schola Cantorum in Montserrat. I studied at the monastery from age 10 to 14 and sang in the Schola Cantorum. This is a place with a very long tradition and a very good library, and also where I heard Mahler’s music for the first time – recorded, not live.

Straight after I left Montserrat, a few friends gave me the complete symphonies, conducted by Bernard Haitink with Elly Ameling singing in the 4th. That was the soundtrack to my life, so to speak, when I was 14, 15, 16 years old. Later on, the first time I conducted Mahler’s music was with a small group. A chamber version of Das Lied von der Erde [The Song of the Earth], Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a Wayfarer] – those were my initial contacts with Mahler.

[...]

Find the full interview in Gustav Mahler: The Conductors’ Interviews
Edited by Wolfgang Schaufler
ISBN: 978-3-7024-7162-0
ISMN: 979-0-008-08493-5
Order number: UE26311 (German Edition: UE26310)

“Wow, Mahler!”

Do you remember the first time you heard Mahler’s music?

Dudamel: It was years ago, and rather funny; my father played the trombone in a salsa group and was also playing with an orchestra. I remember finding the third trombone part of Mahler’s 1st Symphony. 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 1st; I received it as a gift from an uncle. That was the first Mahler I ever listened to.

[...]

Find the full interview in Gustav Mahler: The Conductors’ Interviews
Edited by Wolfgang Schaufler
ISBN: 978-3-7024-7162-0
ISMN: 979-0-008-08493-5
Order number: UE26311 (German Edition: UE26310)

“Mahler’s First was the great emotion of my youth”

Do you remember the first time you heard Mahler’s music?

Chailly: Yes, very clearly; it was in the early 60s in Rome, at the Auditorium del Foro Italico with the RAI Rome Orchestra. I attended a rehearsal of the 1st Symphony, conducted by Zubin Mehta, who was very young at that time. I was there because my father was working at the RAI Rome, programming classical music. He had to leave for a meeting and said, “Stay here for one hour and don’t move, don’t talk, don’t do anything!” When I heard the power of the music it left me feeling at a complete standstill. I didn’t know what to do, how to react … it was the great emotion of my youth.

[...]

Find the full interview in Gustav Mahler: The Conductors’ Interviews
Edited by Wolfgang Schaufler
ISBN: 978-3-7024-7162-0
ISMN: 979-0-008-08493-5
Order number: UE26311 (German Edition: UE26310)

“Mahler controls chaos”

Do you remember the first time you heard Mahler’s music?

Oramo: I have to confess that I can’t remember. I went to concerts with my father quite often when I was young, especially when my mother 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 then.

[...]

Find the full interview in Gustav Mahler: The Conductors’ Interviews
Edited by Wolfgang Schaufler
ISBN: 978-3-7024-7162-0
ISMN: 979-0-008-08493-5
Order number: UE26311 (German Edition: UE26310)

“Mahler wanted to live, that’s the whole point!”

Do you remember the first time you heard Mahler’s music?

Pappano: My first encounter with Mahler’s music was, of course, with the vocal music; the Rückert-Lieder – Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen [I am lost to the world] had a huge impact on me, but you know, strangely enough, the song that stays with me is Liebst du um Schönheit [If you love for beauty]. I know that song was originally not part of the group, but it’s so specifically Mahlerian. Mahler’s identity is absolutely unmistakable – in three notes. And this is what made such a huge impression on me; it couldn’t be anybody else.

It’s very popular to say that Mahler was influenced by this or that. He was a conductor, the greatest conductor of his generation, certainly for opera, and he had everything in his head, so of course his music can be a mishmash of all different things; but what you do with this mishmash, what you do with your influences and how you make them into something that is your own – he did that like nobody else.

[...]

Find the full interview in Gustav Mahler: The Conductors’ Interviews
Edited by Wolfgang Schaufler
ISBN: 978-3-7024-7162-0
ISMN: 979-0-008-08493-5
Order number: UE26311 (German Edition: UE26310)