“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.
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