# Mahler Reconsidered



## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

It's been a year since I joined TC, and one of the first things I posted (if not the first) was a thread questioning what I called the 'Mahler hype', and how I didn't understand it.

I had never given Mahler's music a really fair chance, and it was because I hardly had the patience to sit through an entire movement of any of his work. I didn't know where to start, and I think that's okay.

The fact that I'm now deeply moved by several portions of Mahler's symphonies is not even the central point of my post — it's really that within this year I've answered the question I posted last May, and it doesn't really have to do with Mahler. The answer has less to do with the fact that I would later discover the gloriously beautiful brass excerpt in movement V of Mahler's Second, and more to do with the fact that it happened organically, as something I more or less stumbled across. It has less to do with the clever little tuba solos I'd end up exploring in the First and Fifth symphonies, and more to do with the fact that I played those excerpts with my awesome older trombone colleagues today, without a single memory of the skepticism I used to feel about the guy who wrote them — all I could think was that I was playing beautiful music, so center my pitch, because I guide the roots of each chord; these guys are all tuning down to me; Give it air, give it velvet tone, make it wonderful. And I guess that's what happened.

All I'm thinking is, it seems that maturity of listening, as well as any kind of maturity, seems simply to be giving things the time and patience to happen organically, and not beating yourself up when they don't. There's not always an immediate solution to failure to understand, there's just the decision to not resent what we don't understand. Thanks TC for giving me a solid year, and enjoy your Mahler and Bruckner and the beautiful weather if you're from the East Coast.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Yes, it is part of a maturing process. At first (when I was a teenager and in my early twenties), I too didn't "get" Mahler. I love Mahler's music now and his 2nd, which you mentioned, is my favorite of all his symphonies. I also didn't even like Verdi's Requiem the first two times I heard it. Now, I think it's one of the most glorious pieces of music ever written.

Keep your ears and your mind open on this forum. Explore the myriad threads and try to listen to the music linked on so many posts. Some you'll like, some you'll hate, some you'll love, find fascinating, interesting, and everything else. I have discovered many composers and pieces I was unfamiliar with before I came here to TC. There is so much more to listen to. I wish I had more time for this web site. It's a treasure trove!

V


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

“All I'm thinking is, it seems that maturity of listening, as well as any kind of maturity, seems simply to be giving things the time and patience to happen organically, and not beating yourself up when they don't. There's not always an immediate solution to failure to understand, there's just the decision to not resent what we don't understand.”

Bravo. Some listeners never seem to notice this. They’re willing to write off a composer for a lifetime without considering that one’s receptivity can change through time and maturity. It’s not impossible for a new understanding & appreciation to come unforced when the person is ready. This happened to me with my appreciation of Mozart... I had to be ready for its intensity, balance, and perfection and then he became a star in my library, and later so did the magnificent Mahler. Then Bruckner.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

This seems to be a pattern for most classical listeners. At first you don't get it, then one day something clicks and then you're hooked. After some time, you can't even explain why you didn't get it at first. When I was a kid, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Berlioz were "easy" to get into. Mahler not so much. Then the 7th symphony came my way and that opened the doors. I grew up in the great heyday of Mahler and remember well the thrill and excitement of the recordings from Bernstein, Solti, Kubelik, and even Abravanel. In those days Mahler was still on the outside. Then he became big business: more recordings and books than I ever thought possible. Mahler performances were events. But nothing lasts forever. I've been to Mahler concerts in recent years where the hall was less than full. Recordings still come out, but not nearly at the rate they did a generation ago. It seems that in some ways Mahler peaked and his fortunes are waning. Is it possible that it's over-played? I don't know. Was all the hype too much? Could be, in retrospect. Don't get me wrong - I have more Mahler than any other composer in my library, and by a significant margin. And I've stopped collecting it, for the most part. Having two dozen sets and dozens of individual recordings is enough, and I don't think that any up and coming conductor has anything to say about any of the symphonies that hasn't been said before. This could change.

So maybe maturity also brings with it more discriminating taste, and perhaps less patience for long-winded music. I can now hear the triviality and cheapness that occurs in Mahler. Concomitantly, some composer I used to ignore because I thought they were dull and uninteresting have risen in my estimation and their music spends more time in the cd player - like Mendelssohn, Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Nielsen, and lately Shostakovich.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Of course it is also true that there isn't necessarily anything to 'get' for a particular individual regarding a particular piece and that one's initial estimation can remain without changing however many times one experiences it.

I love much of Mahler's music but do find some of it pretty verbose. I think movements like the first of his seventh have grown on me quite a bit. I do think he was a genius.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Minor Sixthist said:


> All I'm thinking is, it seems that maturity of listening, as well as any kind of maturity, seems simply to be giving things the time and patience to happen organically, and not beating yourself up when they don't.


This process is happening right now for me with regard to Beethoven's 9th Symphony.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

No one comes to Mahler's symphonies, especially the longer and more obtuse ones, easily. His First Symphony is relatively straightforward but that's the only one. They take multiple hearings and hours of listening to understand though some listeners will grasp the totality of the 5th symphony in a few listens.

So it is probably more an issue of your personal level of maturity and tolerance that led you to a renewed idea of the composer. You may find these ideas changing again down the road.

I invested years to get to know Mahler's symphonies. Once I did, I was enthralled with one of them and could listen to all of them. Now, some years later, I can no longer do that. I know Mahler better and find myself more identifying the shortcomings of his formal designs than deriving any comfort from the music. For each of his exalted ideas, there are scores of others that go on ... and on ... and on without saying much. In this way I find him similar to Richard Wagner -- best taken in small chunks.

Arturo Toscanini disliked Mahler for this reason and said he was anything but a great composer. That was before Mahler became a rock star in the late 20th century through the advocacy of Bernstein and other conductors and increased awareness of the adagietto from the 5th symphony. Now his symphonies are played in concert everywhere almost as often as Beethoven's.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

larold said:


> For each of his exalted ideas, there are scores of others that go on ... and on ... and on without saying much. In this way I find him similar to Richard Wagner -- best taken in small chunks.


Interesting - pretty much my position. Are you suggesting there are composers that don't fail as you think Mahler does?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I think there are composers who should not be blamed for being of particular interest to someone only at a certain point in a person’s life. But sometimes, after they’ve been consumed, they ’re condemned and their shortcomings are listed with great relish, it seems. 

If one loses interest in a composer, can it at least be done with some measure of gratitude for the company and pleasure given? These composers owe selfish listeners nothing other than sacrificing themselves to follow their muse with integrity, and there’s never been a composer on planet earth who did not have his or her shortcomings that could be discussed with some measure of respect and understanding. So it usually comes down to apples and oranges.

Not everyone who comes to Mahler has to labor through his symphonies with repeated hearings in order to like them. That wasn’t true for me, and I was never bothered by the length of his symphonies because he was telling a story, either some kind of a narrative or inner journey. Some listeners have a different idea of time where they are not bothered by the length if something is really going on, and they’re not fooled by poor performances that cannot hold the listener’s attention. When people start to cherrypick Mahler—his symphonies or certain passages they don’t like—I question whether they ever understood him in the first place. Then they dedicate themselves to the opposite and speak ill of him after he was there for them at the time. For some listeners, there may be composers not intended to be of interest for a lifetime and it’s not necessarily the composer's fault.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

larold said:


> I invested years to get to know Mahler's symphonies. Once I did, I was enthralled with one of them and could listen to all of them. Now, some years later, I can no longer do that. I know Mahler better and find myself more identifying the shortcomings of his formal designs than deriving any comfort from the music. For each of his exalted ideas, there are scores of others that go on ... and on ... and on without saying much. In this way I find him similar to Richard Wagner -- best taken in small chunks.
> 
> Arturo Toscanini disliked Mahler for this reason and said he was anything but a great composer.


I know that Toscanini didn't like Mahler's music and wouldn't conduct it. But are you certain that his reason was the one you give? He certainly wouldn't have drawn a parallel with Wagner, of whose operas he was one of the outstanding interpreters (as was Mahler himself). I suspect it was the extreme stylistic elements in Mahler's music - his "everything but the kitchen sink" attempt to "embrace the world," juxtaposing the sublime with the grotesque and the vulgar - even more than the fact that the music ran on too long, that baffled people back then. Mahler will certainly seem overextended if one is unsympathetic to his emotional world, since so much of his form seems determined by an unstated expressive "program."


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Interesting - pretty much my position. Are you suggesting there are composers that don't fail as you think Mahler does?_

I don't know another "great" composer of symphonies, with the possible exception of Liszt, who spends as much time note-spinning between exalted ideas as Mahler. He is an easy target in this regard since he wrote the lengthiest symphony in history (No. 3) and several others way beyond an hour. But it isn't just that.

Just about all his symphonies have some kind of problem. The First can be played in four or five movements; the Second comes to a reasonable place to conclude in the finale -- then goes on another 25 minutes. The Third is a symphony wrapped aournd a cantata. The Fourth is a major curiosity defining a child's view of heaven preceded by some orchestral movements that don't make much sense. The Fifth is the only mature symphony I think of as an unqualified success. The Sixth can be ended two different ways. The Seventh, in five movements, is more a curiosity than No. 4. The Eighth, if you ever read the vocal score in the first half, is a lot of nonsense. The Ninth has a sense of foreboding doom related to Mahler's knowledge of his bad heart and his own pending mortality. The Tenth has about a dozen different editions, all with different music. I know that can't be blamed on Mahler, even though his wife asked another composer to write the first one.

For me, the relative modesty of the First symphony and several of his song cycles are the only Mahler I can listen to without thinking more about their shortcomings than what they do for me emotionally or artistically.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I could easily believe that Toscanini did not like Mahler because, unbeknownst to himself, Toscanini often seemed to lack interpretive imagination and Mahler had it in abundance. He can’t be interpreted literally in Toscanini’s everything is “Allegro con brio,” literal, ‘what you see is what you get' approach while ignoring what’s going on underneath the surface, though he seemed to be able to do that with Wagner. Sometimes a conductor has to read between the lines of the score, but I rarely felt that Toscanini had the ability. Both seemed temperamentally unsuited to each other in the same way that Boulez was temperamentally unsuited to conduct Shostakovich. Imagine Toscanini wanting to rush through a Mahler symphony because of his irascible and oftentimes impatient nature. But with Brahms and Beethoven, it was fortunately a different matter and Toscanini was often at his best.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Larkenfield said:


> *I could easily believe that Toscanini did not like Mahler because, unbeknownst to himself, Toscanini often lacked interpretive imagination and Mahler had it in abundance. He can't be interpreted literally in Toscanini's typically everything is "Allegro con brio," literal, 'what you see is what you get approach' while ignoring what's going on underneath the surface, though he seemed to be able to do that with Wagner. Sometimes a conductor has to read between the lines of the score, but I rarely felt that Toscanini had the ability. *They seemed temperamentally unsuited to each other in the same way that Boulez was temperamentally unsuited to conduct Shostakovich. Imagine Toscanini wanting to rush through a Mahler symphony because of his irascible and oftentimes impatient nature. If scores were sex, he might have been lighting his cigarette in self-satisfaction before the act was even over. But in Brahms and Beethoven, it was fortunately a different matter and Toscanini excelled.


Your estimate of Toscanini seems based on the recordings he made in his old age. Most of his long career is undocumented on records; according to Wiki, "Toscanini disliked recording, especially the acoustic method, and for several years recorded only sporadically as a result. He was fifty-three years old when he made his first recordings in 1920 and didn't begin regular recording until 1938, after he became conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra at the age of seventy." We have evidence that his conducting became more rigid and driven in his later years. It's rather amazing to contemplate the fact that his performance of _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth in 1931 was the slowest ever given in that theater, and according to reviews it was a remarkable experience. No musician "lacking interpretive imagination" could ever have sustained it.

I can agree that Toscanini and Mahler were not temperamentally compatible, but I wouldn't explain that by dismissing Toscanini as unable to read between the lines of a score. To risk stereotyping for the sake of a quick point, I'd describe Toscanini's temperament as Latin and Classical, and Mahler's as Teutonic-Jewish and decadent-Romantic. I'd guess that the Italian didn't see the Austrian Jew's hypersubjective music as worth reading between the lines of - or, to put it another way, what he saw between the lines repulsed him. He probably found it self-indulgent, vulgar, and crass. Toscanini wasn't the only distinguished musician back then unsympathetic to Mahler; Vaughan Williams, I believe, called him a "tolerable imitation of a composer" - not much temperamental affinity there either! And Sibelius's argument with Mahler over what a symphony should be is well known; Sibelius was a Classicist in his own way, and as a Finn not a proponent of "letting it all hang out."

Being so used to Mahler now, we may underestimate how bizarre and abrasive his music seemed to many in, and for some time after, his own time. If people can't identify with what Mahler is going on at length about, they might understandably wonder why he'd be going on at all, and why they should want to go with him. Mahler's high-strung personal journeys are not to everyone's taste even today.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> ..........
> Being so used to Mahler now, we may underestimate how bizarre and abrasive his music seemed to many in, and for some time after, his own time. If people can't identify with what Mahler is going on at length about, they might understandably wonder why he'd be going on at all, and why they should want to go with him. Mahler's high-strung personal journeys are not to everyone's taste even today.


I agree. I think many - the majority, I think - of musicians and the "musical public" were at best suspicious of Mahler during the time Toscanini was in his prime. In Britain he was widely seen as vulgar and, I believe, even in Germany (which may have had something to do with the Nazis). I am not sure how true it is but it used to be said of Barbirolli's famous 1964 recording of Mahler 9 with the Berlin Phil that it was not a work they were familiar with.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Larkenfield said:


> I think there are composers who should not be blamed for being of particular interest to someone only at a certain point in a person's life. But sometimes, after they've been consumed, they 're condemned and their shortcomings are listed with great relish, it seems.
> 
> If one loses interest in a composer, can it at least be done with some measure of gratitude for the company and pleasure given? These composers owe selfish listeners nothing other than sacrificing themselves to follow their muse with integrity, and there's never been a composer on planet earth who did not have his or her shortcomings that could be discussed with some measure of respect and understanding. So it usually comes down to apples and oranges.
> 
> Not everyone who comes to Mahler has to labor through his symphonies with repeated hearings in order to like them. That wasn't true for me, and I was never bothered by the length of his symphonies because he was telling a story, either some kind of a narrative or inner journey. Some listeners have a different idea of time where they are not bothered by the length if something is really going on, and they're not fooled by poor performances that cannot hold the listener's attention. When people start to cherrypick Mahler-his symphonies or certain passages they don't like-I question whether they ever understood him in the first place. Then they dedicate themselves to the opposite and speak ill of him after he was there for them at the time. For some listeners, there may be composers not intended to be of interest for a lifetime and it's not necessarily the composer's fault.


Where is the disrespect?


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## Oldhoosierdude (May 29, 2016)

Anyway.

I reconsidered Mahler also. I simply didn't get the hype. I could listen to #1 but the others seemed too long. They were not important to me. I finally decided about a year ago to give Mahler on good try and found that the 4th was quite enjoyable even though the song features asparagus in heaven : but thanks to Maurice Abravenel and the Utah Symphony I grew to like it. So I tried the 5th and on from there. I still can't much deal with the 3rd or 8th and the 9th only has moments.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Mahler's high-strung personal journeys are not to everyone's taste even today.


Or, as I've found, more to my taste on some days than on others.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I finally decided about a year ago to give Mahler on good try and found that the 4th was quite enjoyable even though the song features asparagus in heaven.


I would respectfully submit that asparagus in heaven is the linchpin on which the entire symphony hangs.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> ....It's rather amazing to contemplate the fact that his performance of _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth in 1931 was the slowest ever given in that theater, and according to reviews it was a remarkable experience. No musician "lacking interpretive imagination" could ever have sustained it.


for sure...Toscanini was imbued with the spirit of opera, of course, and as such, he excelled at presenting it - the dramatic flow, the development - rising/falling action, climaxes, the respites. This was right in AT's wheelhouse...



> I can agree that Toscanini and Mahler were not temperamentally compatible, but I wouldn't explain that by dismissing Toscanini as unable to read between the lines of a score. To risk stereotyping for the sake of a quick point, I'd describe Toscanini's temperament as Latin and Classical, and Mahler's as Teutonic-Jewish and decadent-Romantic. I'd guess that the Italian didn't see the Austrian Jew's hypersubjective music as worth reading between the lines of - or, to put it another way, what he saw between the lines repulsed him.


a reasonable summation...we'll never know for sure, but this certainly sounds plausible.


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## OperaChic (Aug 26, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I can agree that Toscanini and Mahler were not temperamentally compatible, but I wouldn't explain that by dismissing Toscanini as unable to read between the lines of a score. To risk stereotyping for the sake of a quick point, I'd describe Toscanini's temperament as Latin and Classical, and Mahler's as Teutonic-Jewish and decadent-Romantic. I'd guess that the Italian didn't see the Austrian Jew's hypersubjective music as worth reading between the lines of - or, to put it another way, what he saw between the lines repulsed him. He probably found it self-indulgent, vulgar, and crass. Toscanini wasn't the only distinguished musician back then unsympathetic to Mahler; Vaughan Williams, I believe, called him a "tolerable imitation of a composer" - not much temperamental affinity there either! And Sibelius's argument with Mahler over what a symphony should be is well known; Sibelius was a Classicist in his own way, and as a Finn not a proponent of "letting it all hang out."


Let's not forget however that Furtwängler also wasn't particularly fond of Mahler, and Furtwängler's artistic approach and temperament couldn't have been farther from Toscanini's.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

larold said:


> Arturo Toscanini disliked Mahler for this reason and said he was anything but a great composer.


Even Homer nods.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Toscanini hated Shostakovich as well although he agreed to conduct the US premiere of the latter's 7th symphony, largely to assist in maintaining reasonably cordial relations in the uneasy wartime alliance between the US and USSR. Each to his own, I suppose. Following on from this, it's not surprising that he wasn't keen on Mahler either although I am surprised that Furtwangler doesn't seem to have been given his support of composers like Hindemith.

As far as Mahler goes, I prefer the purely orchestral symphonies (1st, 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th) but the 2nd, 3rd and 4th have some great moments. I don't like the 8th at all though.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

larold said:


> Arturo Toscanini disliked Mahler for this reason and said he was anything but a great composer.


Do we know this for sure? In the final volume of Louis de la Grange's monumental Mahler biography, he tells a touching story about Toscanini. Sometime in the 1950's he was walking through a music school in Rome, and heard an orchestra rehearsing some utterly beautiful, powerful music. He entered the auditorium and sat down until it was over. He asked the conductor what it was. The conductor was astonished, and said something like, "maestro, that's Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde". Toscanini said "I never knew he could compose like that" and left. Incredible when you think about it. In the 40 years since Mahler's death, while Toscanini was working in New York, London, Salzburg and elsewhere, that he had never heard a note of this music. Was this Toscanini's first encounter with Mahler's music? I don't know.


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## Biffo (Mar 7, 2016)

OperaChic said:


> Let's not forget however that Furtwängler also wasn't particularly fond of Mahler, and Furtwängler's artistic approach and temperament couldn't have been farther from Toscanini's.


Furtwangler's attitude to Mahler was contradictory. In the years up to 1933 Furtwangler conducted performances of Symphonies 1, 3 & 4 with the Berlin Philharmonic. After the end of WW2 he was disparaging about Mahler and apart from a recording of the 'Wayfarer' songs with Fischer-Dieskau he seems to have avoided his music altogether.


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## Biffo (Mar 7, 2016)

Toscanini had a personal antipathy to Mahler. Mahler was engaged by the Metropolitan Opera to conduct the German repertoire. After the first season a new manager appeared, Gatti-Casazza and his protege Toscanini. Toscanini wanted to conduct Wagner, part of Mahler's repertoire and by his intrigues with G-C forced Mahler out of the Met.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Biffo said:


> Furtwangler's attitude to Mahler was contradictory. In the years up to 1933 Furtwangler conducted performances of Symphonies 1, 3 & 4 with the Berlin Philharmonic. After the end of WW2 he was disparaging about Mahler and apart from a recording of the 'Wayfarer' songs with Fischer-Dieskau he seems to have avoided his music altogether.


I wasn't aware of that. A shame those performances were not recorded but live recording was very much in its infancy at that time.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Biffo said:


> Toscanini had a personal antipathy to Mahler. Mahler was engaged by the Metropolitan Opera to conduct the German repertoire. After the first season a new manager appeared, Gatti-Casazza and his protege Toscanini. Toscanini wanted to conduct Wagner, part of Mahler's repertoire and by his intrigues with G-C forced Mahler out of the Met.


Sounds more like Mahler would have a personal antipathy to Toscanini.


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## Beet131 (Mar 24, 2018)

Marin Alsop equated conducting Mahler's 5th to climbing Mount Everest. Upon my first ever introduction to Mahler's 5th decades ago, I didn't get it at all (except for the 4th Mov't Adagietto). In a way, as Alsop once metaphorically claimed, I now equate my listening to Mahler's symphonies as climbing Mount Everest. There can be immense struggles to "get it," sometimes with catastrophic failures of understanding. But I always went back to the mountain of his work because I knew there was something there that I really wanted to gain. After so many trials it finally crystallized for me in a live performance of the New York Philharmonic in Vail, Colorado. It was such an exhilarating experience, and perhaps when one does finally "get it," it is like standing on top of that peak and feeling like you've really accomplished something. I love Mahler. I don't think one can ever fully realize the enormous scope of his work. I always hear something new with each listening. I have movements that I've heard dozens of times become new favorites until they are supplanted by another new favorite.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

I was for a long time puzzled by both Mahler and Bruckner. After substantial effort I'm making progress on Bruckner but by and large Mahler remains opaque to me, with some few exceptions (Klemperer's Symphony #2 being the most prominent; he's able to make the symphony make sense to me unlike anyone else). Work in progress continues.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

chill782002 said:


> As far as Mahler goes, I prefer the purely orchestral symphonies (1st, 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th) but the 2nd, 3rd and 4th have some great moments. I don't like the 8th at all though.


I do think that it is easier for someone new to Mahler to stick with the purely orchestral symphonies. Definitely the 8th is the toughest one for me. I don't dislike it but as with Mendelssohn's 2nd, it is overly choral and takes more effort to listen through. At least with Beethoven's Ninth, the choral part is restricted to the last movement. That works better for me.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Fritz Kobus said:


> I do think that it is easier for someone new to Mahler to stick with the purely orchestral symphonies. Definitely the 8th is the toughest one for me. I don't dislike it but as with Mendelssohn's 2nd, it is overly choral and takes more effort to listen through. At least with Beethoven's Ninth, the choral part is restricted to the last movement. That works better for me.


I am not so sure about this. The 8th is a tough nut - or maybe just a weaker symphony - but there are lots of very popular works by other composers that are vocal and/or choral. Does it matter that they are not symphonies? I don't see why.

I got into Mahler when I discovered the 5th symphony in Barbirolli's recording which I got out from our local library. It blew me away from first hearing and was maybe the first classical work I introduced my father to. He took to it very quickly, too. After that I found it more difficult. The First came easily enough but the Sixth (again Barbirolli) was a bit of a disappointment initially. I think it was Bernstein's VPO recording, unremittingly grim though it is, that finally really grabbed me in this work but that was some time later. I enjoyed 2 but found it's structure - or, rather, the way it came together in my mind as a cohesive whole - a challenge. It didn't help that the critically recommended recording at the time - Rattle's - left me cold and still does. Klemperer and Solti rescued me in this to some extent. The 9th and DLVDE impressed me but for quite a while I don't think I really got Mahler because nothing thrilled me as much as the 5th had. It seems to me now that my love of this symphony led to my misunderstanding Mahler for years. I abandoned my Mahler interest for several years before returning via 9 and 2 and, then DLVDE.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> The 8th is a tough nut - or maybe just a weaker symphony - but there are lots of very popular works by other composers that are vocal and/or choral.


I don't get this almost universal hate towards the 8th symphony. I liked it almost from first listening. But one of the reasons might be that I like Faust, I own the German original and can follow the German text of the symphony. And the text is pretty deep, because Faust is a very deep book by one of the greatest poets of all time. And the music fits the text well.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Jacck said:


> I don't get this almost universal hate towards the 8th symphony. I liked it almost from first listening. But one of the reasons might be that I like Faust, I own the German original and can follow the German text of the symphony. And the text is pretty deep, because Faust is a very deep book by one of the greatest poets of all time. And the music fits the text well.


You may be right. I must get around to giving it some serious attention some day. Probably I should have added to my post that it is the one I have not really _tried _with since the early days that I describe in my post. The reputation among Mahler fans as the one you are allowed not to like may have put me off. Thanks for the encouragement.

Any suggestions for which recordings? I seem to have acquired a good few Mahler sets in my time so I should have something recommendable.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> Any suggestions for which recordings? I seem to have acquired a good few Mahler sets in my time so I should have something recommendable.


I am happy with the Boulez recording, and I am not familar with too many other ones, so cannot really say that it is the definitive recording. For the 9th, I like Chailly


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> You may be right. I must get around to giving it some serious attention some day. Probably I should have added to my post that it is the one I have not really _tried _with since the early days that I describe in my post. The reputation among Mahler fans as the one you are allowed not to like may have put me off. Thanks for the encouragement.
> 
> Any suggestions for which recordings? I seem to have acquired a good few Mahler sets in my time so I should have something recommendable.


Kubelik is good and for something very dynamic and intense, Solti. I'm very partial to the Eighth. It and the second are my favourites, then the ninth, seventh and third. Then four, five, six and one. And I love the Cooke performing version of the tenth too.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Enthusiast said:


> I am not so sure about this. The 8th is a tough nut - or maybe just a weaker symphony - but there are lots of very popular works by other composers that are vocal and/or choral. Does it matter that they are not symphonies? I don't see why.


I was thinking more from the perspective of someone who is mainly into orchestral not choral works. It may also be that it is hard to find a good recording of the 8th.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Since there has been discussion as to why some don't get into Mahler, I think it's that the works can seem too long and rambling. There doesn't seem to be much focus; tutti sections appear, espousing one idea, and are quickly replaced by different ideas and instruments. 
Also, this era was harmonically freer than previous eras, and this also contributes to an unsettled feel. 

Personally, I think Mahler had too many irons in the fire, with conducting and staging operas, and his little vacation cottage breaks were too arbitrary to be spontaneous and inspired. He was a man who did not know his own limitations.

On the other hand, there are those among us who seem to have no real "faith" in Mahler. After all, he was human, but on a noble task of trying to assimilate all of history, and to ready it for the 20th century. In this light, "unfocussed" loses it's negativity if we accept the idea of collage, and of the clash of ideas, and multiplicity of styles.


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