Mahler month → The circle
By the time he began work on the Fifth Symphony in 1901 Mahler was becoming increasingly involved with a circle of pioneering modernist artists organized around the Vienna Secession. That year he courted Alma Schindler, daughter of one of the group’s founders, Karl Moll. Mahler’s closest artistic collaborator at the Court Opera, stage designer Alfred Roller, was also a member of the Secession.
In 1902 Mahler conducted his own arrangement of Beethoven’s music for the opening of a major Secession exhibit dedicated to the composer. Art historians have noted a facial resemblance between the heroic knight/Beethoven figure and Mahler in the frieze created by Gustav Klimt for the exhibit:
Gustav Klimt – Knight Detail, from the Beethoven Frieze
The Beethoven Exhibition, Vienna Secession, 1902
