Mahler

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It's interesting that so far on these boards you have not found the advice you are looking for.

What "advice" does D-G "look for" in the post you quote from, Ferretf?

This is par for the course, as any online mention of Mahler immediately turns into a comparative review of various performances on CD, peppered with
nostalgic memories of performances in the concert hall. It's almost as if the fans want to tell others "my choice is the best"

And immediately afterwards gets the usual clichés about "neurosis and breast-beating" from those who do not hear how great the Music is, and that's what can also be found to be tedious.

We must of course never forget the important issue of the arrangement of the movements in the Ninth.

You've got the score upside-down, Ferretf - it's number 6 in which this matter arises!

[Nick Armstrong]

Go ferney !!

[Richard Barrett]

RVW's quote was 'a tolerable imitation of a composer'

I wonder what Mahler would have had to say about Vaughan Williams...

I do like the idea of a thread which mentions recordings hardly if at all. I don't think whether Mahler's music communicates with you or not is dependent on who is playing it. But then I also don't hear "neurosis and breast-beating" in it. I think that such reactions say at least as much about the listener as about the music. There are I would say almost infinitely many ways of hearing it, of finding one's way into it, and certainly I keep finding more. Many of the adverse reactions to it seem to me to betray a lack of appreciation of this quality.

[cloughie]

By 'eck we're bringing out the Mahler refuseniks. I tend to like 1-5 so much that it's taking me an age to move on to 6-9 and the bit of 10. It's probably irrational I always feel there's something intangible about other people's tinkering so and completions - Mahler 10, Bruckner 9, Payne's 3 based loosely on Elgar - but it's irrational also that I really like orchestrations of piano works and piano versions of orchestral works.

[cloughie]

I wonder what Mahler would have had to say about Vaughan Williams....

Had he ever heard or heard of him?

[ahinton]

I wonder what Mahler would have had to say about Vaughan Williams

I'ts a shame, perhaps, that wondering is all that we can do; "an imitation of a tolerable composer", perhaps? I suspect, however, that he'd have thought rather moe of the best of Vaughan Williams' music than he would of his crass comments such as this one.

I do like the idea of a thread which mentions recordings hardly if at all. I don't think whether Mahler's music communicates with you or not is dependent on who is playing it. But then I also don't hear "neurosis and breast-beating" in it.

Nor do I - and indeed nor have I ever done so in at least half a century of listening to Mahler's music.

I think that such reactions say at least as much about the listener as about the music.

I don't "think" so; I'm damn' sure that they do!

There are I would say almost infinitely many ways of hearing it, of finding one's way into it, and certainly I keep finding more. Many of the adverse reactions to it seem to me to betray a lack of appreciation of this quality.

Indeed.

[ChrisBennell]

I recommend trying the last movement of number 4. With a good soprano, I find this a very emotional experience which can bring on the tears!

Also away from the symphonies, Des Knaben Wunderhorn. I have the performance by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elizabeth Schwarzkopf - completely spellbinding - and most of the songs are fairly short.

I've also found my musical tastes have changed (matured?) over many years. Pieces I didn't use to like or found boring, are now indispensable. (e.g.Strauss 4 Last Songs - couldn't stand it for years - but now love it!)

[gradus]

Indeed, tastes change with age and life. Mahler is a composer I don't seem to listen to as much as I used to yet I still like his music but it seems to be entering the category of music that I prefer to hear live rather than in recorded form and since I don't get to concerts regularly, he slips from me.
I confess that I am still at odds with the 4 Last Songs though I daresay this will change too just as I have developed a late-ish enthusiasm for Brahms and a sharpened appetite for instrumental and chamber music.

[Barbirollians]

I was pretty resistant to Mahler when I was young as he was so raved about in the early 1980s it almost seemed like overexposure . The record that really opened my ears after the grim Tennstedt Mahler 3 which I could not stick - was Maazel's lovely VPO Fourth swiftly followed by Lenny's DG recordings of 1,5,7 - Barbirolli's 6 and 9 ,Walter's 1 and 2 and the Solti 8

[Richard Barrett]

Quoting myself, since this doesn't appear to have generated a response:

I do like the idea of a thread which mentions recordings hardly if at all. I don't think whether Mahler's music communicates with you or not is dependent on who is playing it.

Do people actually disagree with this?

I realise that Mahler's popularity dates more or less from the advent of LP and then stereo recording, but I sometimes have the impression that "Mahler" for some consists of a selection of petrified performances (themselves receding into the past) rather than a living body of work which, as people say of Shakespeare, evolves in its relevance to different times and is to a greater or lesser extent renewed in each performance. I've heard more live Mahler in the last couple of years than in the previous 20, not always in stellar presentations, but this has deepened my appreciation of the music in quite a different way from what I get out of listening to a recording. This is a whole dimension which often seems to be undervalued.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Quoting myself, since this doesn't appear to have generated a response:

I don't think whether Mahler's music communicates with you or not is dependent on who is playing it.

Do people actually disagree with this?

I would say that Mahler's Music is no different from anybody else's in this respect; there have been several times when a performance has changed my opinion of a composer - always from negative to positive. When I recommend a recording of Music to somebody who has heard and disliked a different performance of the same work, I do so in the hope that the different performance (perhaps enhanced by the "negative" experience) might bring them to an experience they will find positive and enhancing. I have to do this with recordings, because "Ah! You should have been in Norwich Town Hall on Saturday, 4th March, 1974" doesn't seem very helpful.

I realise that Mahler's popularity dates more or less from the advent of LP and then stereo recording, but I sometimes have the impression that "Mahler" for some consists of a selection of petrified performances (themselves receding into the past) rather than a living body of work which, as people say of Shakespeare, evolves in its relevance to different times and is to a greater or lesser extent renewed in each performance. I've heard more live Mahler in the last couple of years than in the previous 20, not always in stellar presentations, but this has deepened my appreciation of the music in quite a different way from what I get out of listening to a recording. This is a whole dimension which often seems to be undervalued.

That's possibly the nature of an Internet Forum/Chatroom/Messageboard-type discussion? We can't all have access to Norwich Town Hall, but we can all access the petrified performances (via spotify and his chums) to compare, concur and aim handbags. I don't think that audiences for live performances of Mahler symphonies suggest that there's any danger of ossification, and newer recordings by younger conductors and players show different approaches to the scores that also demonstrate that the Music is "living" and evolving.

What you say rather supports Hornspieler's suggestions on his "Live vs Recording" Thread; and I think comments in defence of recordings are valid here, too. I see from my notes that I have heard Opening of the Mouth eighteen times over the years - if left to Live performances, it would have been only once. But yes, the Live event is the one that's seered into my blood and breath and bone.

[Tevot]

Go ferney !!

He's the Host with the Most

[kea]

There are I would say almost infinitely many ways of hearing it, of finding one's way into it, and certainly I keep finding more. Many of the adverse reactions to it seem to me to betray a lack of appreciation of this quality.

I think I'm definitely one of those, then. When I was doing my listening project I chose recordings by typing "mahler 1", "mahler 2" etc into the Qobuz search box and picking a first page result at random. I often found those recordings to be inadequate despite not knowing the music previously, because listening to it gave me enough of an idea of how it "should" go. So while my opinion of the music wasn't changed by recordings (I was hearing most of it for the first time, anyway) I did put some effort into searching for the "ideal" ones.

In some cases I found even the music itself to be inadequate. For instance part of the reason I dislike 6 is because of the second (or third) movement Andante moderato—it "should" be this moment of perfect beauty and stillness and fragility, judged from the character of the three surrounding movements and my personal belief about how a symphony "should" go, and instead I found it long, mediocre, overblown, clumsy and tedious. Not because any of those things are true, but because I formed a preconceived notion something like 20 seconds into the eighty minute symphony and that's never yet left me.

But I consider it the same with many other composers (Wagner, Strauss, John Adams, etc) my dislike for them is not because they are bad music but because of my personality and the way I form expectations about things.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

He's the Host with the Most

You don't suggest what it is that I have the "most" of - for which, my thanks!

[Richard Barrett]

We can't all have access to Norwich Town Hall

But I'm not in any way running down recordings relative to live performances! I'm just remarking that very often one recording or another (or that unforgettable evening in Norwich Town Hall) might be a distraction.