From Haydn to Brahms though Beethoven, no matter what shocked audiences or elevated them, the listener would have understood where the piece was inevitably going and felt secure within the form. We talk about great composers breaking the mould of history, but in reality, the symphony in the second half of the 19th century still had the same basic shape. It doesn’t surprise me that the initial reception for Mahler’s first two symphonies was lukewarm, at best. Extremes and oppositions inform all he was as a musician, and can help us understand how his music can be universal and personal, fragile and grand, all at the same time. A world-feted opera conductor who never penned one himself a conducting recluse who would spend the summer in a tiny Alpine hut writing, who adored city life (he wrote of his pleasure being disturbed by a street organ in New York). A man racked by insecurity over life and health, who knew, and proclaimed, that his music would live for eternity. The king of Viennese music, who considered himself an alien wherever he went (and was spat at with racism in that city by chorus members rehearsing his “official Opus One” Das klagende Lied). When you observe Mahler the man and composer, you’re met with equal and opposite forces ( pictured right, Mahler in 1892). Instead I’ll share some of the questions I face, and obsessions I have, approaching a performance of this Olympian work. ![]() As ever, he had the right idea - words, sentences can’t begin to express anything of this music. Journalists trying to unlock Claudio Abbado’s genius in interviews on Mahler were met a smile, nod, and just “schöne Musik”, “beautiful music”. I had intended to write about my approach to the upcoming performance of his Second Symphony with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, but the more I thought about words, the more reductive my thoughts became. With these two quotations from Mahler, I already feel like putting my pen down.
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