Essential Mahler
Gustav Mahler was born in 1860 when the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire was at its bloated zenith; he died, in 1911, on the eve of the war that would precipitate its collapse. Though he was more famous as a conductor in his lifetime – and for a significant period afterwards – his music now enjoys enormous popularity both in concert and on record. It represents the last gasp of the grandest, most ambitious Romanticism, offering at the same time the first glimpses of what lay on the musical horizon beyond.
Read more…From an early age, all elements of Mahler’s life seemed to be interlinked. Throughout his compositions – from the earliest folk-infused songs to the heartbreak of the unfinished tenth Symphony – Mahler the composer and Mahler the man were inextricably one. A contemporary of Sigmund Freud, whom he met briefly in 1910, Mahler produced music that reflected key early experiences and losses. It expressed the neuroses and concerns that gradually asserted themselves through the age, as well as the tragedies and joys that marked his own life: one of his young daughters died shortly before he was himself diagnosed with the heart condition that caused his early death; he lived long enough, however, to suffer the collapse of his marriage to Alma (née Schindler). The earlier symphonies, many of which, like the vast Eighth, incorporate chorus or soloists, embody for many Romantic excess. But the Ninth, along with the song-symphony ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ and the fragmentary Tenth, show Mahler finding a sparer, more economical musical language that would prove vastly influential, not least to his disciples in the so-called Second Viennese School.