Mahler Mania, Rebooted

Started by Greta, May 01, 2007, 08:06:38 PM

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calyptorhynchus

Quote from: Atriod on April 18, 2024, 12:52:40 PMI prefer to be taken to the abyss on Sunday evenings, set myself up for a cheery work week  ;D
Where I used to work was the Abyss, Mahler 9 was a school outing by comparison.
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

LKB

The Ninth is neither abyssal nor a school outing ( though Putzi is certainly referenced ).

As to what the Ninth actually  is, though, final definitions still elude me despite my deliberating over the course of some forty years.

Perhaps that's merely a hallmark of all great works of art: Transcending the perceptual limits of any one individual. Otoh, it may be that I'm simply incapable of getting my head all the way around the Symphony. I certainly won't discount that possibility, since I'm smart enough to know how dumb l can be.  :laugh:
Mit Flügeln, die ich mir errungen...

Atriod

Quote from: LKB on April 18, 2024, 07:45:19 PMThe Ninth is neither abyssal nor a school outing ( though Putzi is certainly referenced ).

As to what the Ninth actually  is, though, final definitions still elude me despite my deliberating over the course of some forty years.

Perhaps that's merely a hallmark of all great works of art: Transcending the perceptual limits of any one individual. Otoh, it may be that I'm simply incapable of getting my head all the way around the Symphony. I certainly won't discount that possibility, since I'm smart enough to know how dumb l can be.  :laugh:

As you say what we take away is subjective, but I have a hard time hearing it as anything but what I wrote. Mahler writing about his failing heart in the first movement (both literally and figuratively). How sad the final movement is, not just being adagissimo but then changing the tempo to "extremely slowly." I can't remember who said this (Bernstein?) calling the music being suspended, going beyond time/infinity which is not too dissimilar to what I called it, being taken to the abyss.

I easily hear this in performances like Chailly, Kobayashi/Japan Philharmonic (what I posted on another board is like being taken to the event horizon in that last movement in this performance) or Inbal/Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. I have heard some easy, breezy performances that don't seem to get what it's about.

Herman

Quote from: Atriod on Today at 06:56:07 AMI can't remember who said this (Bernstein?) calling the music being suspended, going beyond time/infinity which is not too dissimilar to what I called it, being taken to the abyss.


I would caution against taking Bernstein's characterisations of Mahler's music too seriously. They're often deeply reductive and yet hard to shake. In one of those 'Bernstein sits down at the piano to explain music' video's he boiled down Tchaikovsky's 4th to "I want it, I want it" as if it were a rock song.