Mahler Mania, Rebooted

[Cato]

It could be that this particular performance is what made everything attractive to your ears! 0:)

Allow me to suggest something (which I have never seen in notes to recordings nor in any other books on Mahler and Bruckner, possibly because the following is just wrong    ), but to my ears the slow movements of the symphonies of Bruckner - in a collective sense - are an influence in Mahler's Third Symphony, especially for the final movement.  I think in particular of the slow movement for Bruckner's Sixth Symphony, with its little funeral march, and of the Seventh, but possibly others  influenced Mahler as well here.

Your ears are far better versed in all these symphonies, so I lend you credence gladly. Whence else had he gotten the nerve for a 25-minute Adagio? That was no casual invention.

Herbert Blomstedt on Bruckner and Mahler at c. 6:30, but the entire interview is worth your time!

"For me, Bruckner is more enigmatic than Mahler."

https://www.youtube.com/v/issTb4oM3O8&feature=share

[PerfectWagnerite]

https://www.youtube.com/v/issTb4oM3O8&feature=share

Man he looks PISSED !

[Cato]

Somebody has been placing classic recordings of Mahler's symphonies with so-called "3-D" sound.  Here is the one, the only, Leopold with the Eighth Symphony from 1950:

https://www.youtube.com/v/T8Uf3A4aM-I&feature=share

[JRJoseph]

It helps a lot to have heaps any of the Mahler or Bruckner symphonies live since their orchestration are so vast and there is so much going on for such a long time.  When listening to recorded sound you can feel the music more realistically.  At least I can.  It also helps to have great audio equipment of course.

[Mirror Image]

It helps a lot to have heaps any of the Mahler or Bruckner symphonies live since their orchestration are so vast and there is so much going on for such a long time.  When listening to recorded sound you can feel the music more realistically.  At least I can.  It also helps to have great audio equipment of course.

What some of your favorite Mahler recordings?

[JRJoseph]

MI. I'm glad you asked this question.  Below are just some of the Mahler symphonies versions I own:

Full sets
Bernstein NY Phil. and Vienna Phil.
Boulez Chicago and Vienna Phil.
Two complete Mahler editions with various conductors and orchestras on DG and EMI
Abbado, Lucerne Festival O. (Blue Ray)
New York Phil. Broadcasts 1948-1982) many great conductors from Barbirolli, Walter, Mitropoulos, etc.
I have many more singles and sets including Zander, Horenstein, Jurowski, Levine

If I had the time I could go on and on.  I believe I have over 200 CDs and 39 DVDs and Blue Rays.  I am not just showing off here.  It just shows my classical music compulsion but at least I do enjoy it.

[Karl Henning]

MI. I'm glad you asked this question.  Below are just some of the Mahler symphonies versions I own:

Full sets
Bernstein NY Phil. and Vienna Phil.
Boulez Chicago and Vienna Phil.
Two complete Mahler editions with various conductors and orchestras on DG and EMI
Abbado, Lucerne Festival O. (Blue Ray)
New York Phil. Broadcasts 1948-1982) many great conductors from Barbirolli, Walter, Mitropoulos, etc.
I have many more singles and sets including Zander, Horenstein, Jurowski, Levine

If I had the time I could go on and on.  I believe I have over 200 CDs and 39 DVDs and Blue Rays.  I am not just showing off here.  It just shows my classical music compulsion but at least I do enjoy it.

This thread is right up your street, then!

[SurprisedByBeauty]

If I had the time I could go on and on.  I believe I have over 200 CDs and 39 DVDs and Blue Rays.  I am not just showing off here.  It just shows my classical music compulsion but at least I do enjoy it.

Don't worry. You wouldn't be in danger of being thought of as showing off, even if you said that you have over 200 CDs and 39 DVDs just of Mahler!. This place is a zoo and we all love bananas!

[Karl Henning]

This place is a zoo and we all love bananas!

Exactly.

[Jay F]

Don't worry. You wouldn't be in danger of being thought of as showing off, even if you said that you have over 200 CDs and 39 DVDs just of Mahler!.

You mean that isn't what he meant?

[Mahlerian]

Here's to late-night revelations.  My early experience of the score of Mahler's Sixth Symphony was through the Eulenberg score edited by Redlich, who wrote an introductory essay on the work.  At the time, I had little experience in either score reading or analysis, so I was inclined to accept his statements as fact, but among other suspect things stated in the essay, there were two that stuck with me:

- That the finale cannot be in sonata form because the chorale never returns

- That the slow movement's only connection to the rest of the work is how distant it is in terms of key

The first of these is wrong, because the chorale does indeed form a key structural piece of the finale by transforming into the second theme group of the allegro.  As I discovered when mapping out the movement, it is structured in a modified sonata form, but with a lengthy intro and a two-part development, the second part of which begins with the false recapitulation of the introduction.

The second is also wrong, as I discovered when analyzing the movement in greater detail.  E-flat major, the key of the movement, is reached at the heart of the opening allegro movement, and E-flat minor appears in the latter parts of the first movement and the scherzo.  Although the major-minor motif is not present in this one movement, a minor-major motif inverting it is.  Several other elements of the movement's themes and development are more or less closely related to the other movements, but I had never figured out what connection, if any, the opening theme had to the rest of the work until now.

In the middle of the second theme of the first movement, Mahler places a jaunty march variation of the theme, and the associated motif becomes the foundation of the retransition to the recapitulation later in the movement.  Seeing as it links the first and second themes, it's a very logical choice.  Interestingly, this section does not return in the recapitulation, as the second theme is reduced entirely to a single gesture.  It does, however, return in the coda, in the key of e-flat minor (very distant from A minor/major).

The theme of the Andante Moderato is, in  fact, directly derived from the head motif of this section, with only the minor alteration of a major to a minor second (though Mahler composed the inner movements first and thus the derivation goes the other way).

Redlich really should have taken Schoenberg seriously when the latter said that there was absolutely nothing extraneous in this work.

[Scion7]

. [asin]B01MZZXR1G[/asin]

^ Anyone have it / any good?
Since you know from a previous post I have like seven versions of this,
doubt I spring for it.

[kishnevi]

. [asin]B01MZZXR1G[/asin]

^ Anyone have it / any good?
Since you know from a previous post I have like seven versions of this,
doubt I spring for it.

I can vouch for the quality of Nott's Tudor DLvdE, but I too have held off on this one .

[Mirror Image]

. [asin]B01MZZXR1G[/asin]

^ Anyone have it / any good?
Since you know from a previous post I have like seven versions of this,
doubt I spring for it.

As I prefer a tenor and mezzo or alto in Das Lied, this Kaufmann recording is definitely not a recording that interests me. Kaufmann must have some kind of hellacious, inflated ego to have conceived this kind of project.

[André]

Excerpts are widely available on the net.  In this new recording the tenor songs are the ones that don't convince me. Mind you, two types of tenor voice are ideal here: heroic in I, lyric in III and V.

As for the high/low voice alternation, no doubt that Mahler knew what he was doing..

But I refrain from condemning the venture. The WP under Nott seem to be a host of angels playing. THAT really caught my attention.

[Mirror Image]

Excerpts are widely available on the net.  In this new recording the tenor songs are the ones that don't convince me. Mind you, two types of tenor voice are ideal here: heroic in I, lyric in III and V.

As for the high/low voice alternation, no doubt that Mahler knew what he was doing..

But I refrain from condemning the venture. The WP under Nott seem to be a host of angels playing. THAT really caught my attention.

The Wiener Philharmoniker do have that rustic, burnished sound that just begs for Das Lied to be performed. There's no denying that.

[Cato]

On a Mahler FaceBook page, someone asked about Mahler's Ninth and "interpretations," so here were my comments:

"Allow me to add a few more thoughts: note the fragmentary opening (i.e. bars 1-7), as if Mahler foresaw - or "foreheard" - the future atomistic concepts of Webern. These fragments, or musical cells, will be used as the basis (in general) of much of what is to come. Turning fragments into a cohesive whole, attempting to change the fragments into something stronger, this could be the unconscious imperative of the work. The 4 bass notes of the harp (F#-A-B-A), a kind of variation on the *Dies Irae* (C-B-C-A) will be heard later at various times, and in variations e.g. the last four notes of the violas in the last bars of the final movement (i.e. G-Ab-Bb-Ab) act as an echo of that opening fragment. Trying to construct a musical universe from atoms, Mahler is perhaps trying to construct an expression of his own life. Two clues about the symphony are found in a letter to Bruno Walter: Mahler said it is "closest to the Fourth" but is also "completely different." Another clue is that Mahler mentioned the work comes after some of the "brutalen Lebensstrudel" ("brutal maelstrom of Life"). If the Fourth deals with the transitory nature of Life in a "voelkisch" or naive manner, the Ninth deals with the same transitory theme with disdain, anger, but especially with resignation. Note the final direction in the score is "Ersterbend" i.e. "dying away."

[snyprrr]

tTried to get excited over M6 today,... couldn't do it ...

[Mirror Image]

tTried to get excited over M6 today,... couldn't do it ...

Sounds like a personal problem. I LOVE Mahler's 6th. One of the most exquisite pieces of music I know.

[bwv 1080]

tTried to get excited over M6 today,... couldn't do it ...

there ought to be a pill to help with that