My 2009 performance of Mahler 5 with the WCFSO will air this evening at 8pm EST on Iowa Public Radio [link is an mp3 stream]. We took a unique approach to presenting the piece, mixing multimedia with live music and offering insights from orchestra members into the experience of playing Mahler. The image above is one of several views of the event by WCFSO photographer Noah Henscheid. [You may notice me holding my iPhone in some of the other shots – I was using it to cue slides and video live onstage.]
In the event that you get to this post after the stream ends, a re-embed and download of the first movement is below; please feel free to grab the code from the player and share on your blog as well.
Gustav Mahler, writing to his wife Alma in October 1904 after an early rehearsal of his Fifth Symphony, described the Scherzo as ‘this primeval music, this foaming, roaring, raging sea of sound, these dancing stars, these breathtaking, iridescent and flashing breakers.’ Now one more item can be added to Mahler’s list - this cellphone ringtone!
The final sounding in my series of posts leading up to tomorrow’s WCFSO performance of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony comes from the man himself. On November 9, 1905 Mahler visited the Welte & Sohne studios in Leipzig and recorded several piano rolls of his own music using the Welte-Mignon system; the rolls from that day are the only audio documentation of Mahler’s approach as a performer. Here is the most substantial and fascinating performance from that session a century ago - the entire first movement of his Fifth Symphony:
Mahler – Symphony no 5, Trauermarsch - mp3
Gustav Mahler, piano from Mahler Plays Mahler
Gustav Mahler’s music is notoriously challenging for performers and listeners alike, and during and after his lifetime his symphonies and song cycles met with coolness and even hostility from both groups. Over the course of the twentieth century a number of committed performers helped to spark a wider embrace of his music among orchestras and audiences.
Leonard Bernstein was Mahler’s most notable advocate, in no small part due to the consonances between their professional lives – Mahler preceded Bernstein as music director of the New York Philharmonic, and both enjoyed great success as conductors but faced critical disparagement of their compositions. Both men also had rich but conflicted encounters with their mutual given religion, Judaism.
Musically, Bernstein’s ability to extend the emotional intensity of the orchestras he conducted made him an intriguing interpreter of the hyper-expressive sound world of Mahler. Here is an excerpt of Bernstein rehearsing the Fifth Symphony with another of Mahler’s orchestras, the Vienna Philharmonic, and searching for that special ‘Mahler Klang.’
