Mahler

[vinteuil]

.

... with increasing age I find a lot of the Mahler I used to love bloated and overblown. (I never got on with the 8th.)

I still find the songs can be magical - but prefer the smaller-scale or piano versions.

Here's a cheap way of getting a lot of good stuff :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00008LOM5

- and I am currently enjoying

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00U8ABEUC

.
and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00125A2QE

.
and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002K9C0R0

[rauschwerk]

Everyone seems to love Mahler. Am I the only person who doesn’t?

No. I really used to like Symphonies 1,2 (sang in it),4 and especially 6, but the last time I listened to 6, the first movement was all I could take. I know it's a masterpiece but there it is. I have completely gone off Mahler's music.

[Beef Oven!]

No. I really used to like Symphonies 1,2 (sang in it),4 and especially 6, but the last time I listened to 6, the first movement was all I could take. I know it's a masterpiece but there it is. I have completely gone off Mahler's music.

I also sang in 2. I didn't 'alf get an old fashioned look from the people in the seats close to me.

[EdgeleyRob]

No. I really used to like Symphonies 1,2 (sang in it),4 and especially 6, but the last time I listened to 6, the first movement was all I could take. I know it's a masterpiece but there it is. I have completely gone off Mahler's music.

Me too,but only temporarily I think.
There was a time when I was obsessed with Mahler.
Nowadays I just can't bear it,feels like I'm being bombarded and I can't breathe and yet I love this music and can't imagine that I won't go back to it in the future.

[cloughie]

.

... with increasing age I find a lot of the Mahler I used to love bloated and overblown. (I never got on with the 8th.)

I still find the songs can be magical - but prefer the smaller-scale or piano versions.

Here's a cheap way of getting a lot of good stuff :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00008LOM5

- and I am currently enjoying

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00U8ABEUC

.
and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00125A2QE

.
and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002K9C0R0

Have you tried the Naxos Two Piano version of Mahler 2 - Bruno Walter arrangement, or the Douglas Boyd/Kate Royal chamber arrangement of Mahler 4?

[vinteuil]

Have you tried the Naxos Two Piano version of Mahler 2 - Bruno Walter arrangement, or the Douglas Boyd/Kate Royal chamber arrangement of Mahler 4?

... I have the naxos 2 - and must look at the Manchester Camerata 4 - but I do have and like :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CGUSRVG

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00000K384

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CY7S7IE

On the other hand I have not got much joy from -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00005YPZJ

[verismissimo]

... or the Douglas Boyd/Kate Royal chamber arrangement of Mahler 4?

Erwin Stein's arrangement.

[cloughie]

... I have the naxos 2 - and must look at the Manchester Camerata 4 - but I do have and like :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CGUSRVG

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00000K384

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CY7S7IE

On the other hand I have not got much joy from -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00005YPZJ

The Boyd had the same arranger as Pinnock.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I also sang in 2. I didn't 'alf get an old fashioned look from the people in the seats close to me.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

For anyone who enjoys transcriptions of Mahler for piano, Ronald Stevenson's excellent clavification of the First Movement of the Tehth Symphony (coupled with Christopher White's transcription of Cooke et co's arrangement of the remaining movements) is highly recommendable:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mahler-Symphony-No-10-Transcription-piano/dp/B0036FOV4C

(and Forumistas might wish to earn points and help these people out of their difficulties:

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Gu...Andante-Adagio)



Mahler - great composer; one of my favourites.

[Beef Oven!]

[Ferretfancy]

I have never listened to Mahler much. I have always had a feeling that I was perhaps not too keen on his music, but that if I really listened I might learn to appreciate it. This view has been somewhat shaken of late.

The first shaft of doubt was Mahler’s 5th at the Usher Hall last Festival, the first time I had heard a Mahler symphony played live in years. By half-way through I decided that I did not like this music – in fact, I positively disliked it. I sat through to the end, but it was not an enjoyable experience.

Then tonight was one of the highlights of the OAE 30th anniversary season, Mahler’s 2nd with Jurowski at the Festival Hall. The orchestra was vast, the chorus was vast, it was a Great Occasion. The orchestra played on instruments of the period, of course, and we heard afterwards in a discussion how this and an authentic Mahler style contributed to the performance. Everyone I talked to afterwards was full of the wonders of the performance. And yet, it left me completely cold. The music was perfectly listenable to, I appreciated all sorts of marvellous playing and singing, Sarah Connolly was marvellous, and yet the whole thing said nothing to me.

Everyone seems to love Mahler. Am I the only person who doesn’t?

There's absolutely no reason why you should be expected to like Mahler's music, or indeed that of any other composers. For my part, I listen to the early symphonies once in a while, but then the Mahlerian neurosis and breast beating becomes to much and I retire from the battle. No doubt some will think it my loss, well so be it.

It's interesting that so far on these boards you have not found the advice you are looking for. This is par for the course, as any online mention of Mahler immediately turns into a comparative review of various performances on CD, peppered with
nostalgic memories of performances in the concert hall. It's almost as if the fans want to tell others "my choice is the best"

We must of course never forget the important issue of the arrangement of the movements in the Ninth.

No other composer, with the possible exception of Wagner, attracts such a cult following with such fierce loyalties, and that's what i find so tedious. It's a real shame, because Mahler was a good composer, or at least as Vaughan Williams said, a good imitation of a composer - A little unfair perhaps, but sometimes I see what he meant.

On a positive note, the song cycles are great, possibly the best of him,and I'll never forget the performance of the Third that Claudio Abbado gave at the Proms a few years ago. Just enjoy what you like, there is such a wealth of music out there to choose from.

[ahinton]

For anyone who enjoys transcriptions of Mahler for piano, Ronald Stevenson's excellent clavification of the First Movement of the Tehth Symphony (coupled with Christopher White's transcription of Cooke et co's arrangement of the remaining movements) is highly recommendable:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mahler-Symphony-No-10-Transcription-piano/dp/B0036FOV4C

(and Forumistas might wish to earn points and help these people out of their difficulties:

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Gu...Andante-Adagio)



Mahler - great composer; one of my favourites.

Good to see a push for Stevenson's transcription, although Christopher White, who has transcribed the four movements that Mahler did not complete, is simply not the pianist that Stevenson was and I suspect that some of the adverse criticism of this "clavification" (a Graingerism of which Stevenson would warmly have approved!) has arisen from the playing rather than the transcription work; anyone who needs evidence of Stevenson the pianist and did not have the good fortune to hear him live in his prime (and that, sadly, is most people, given how rarely he performed) need only pick up the CDs on the Altarus label (especially his own monumental Passacaglia on D-S-C-H).

For all that Stevenson is widely known as a leading authority on Busoni, to whose legacy he devoted a substantial slice of his life's work, it was Rachmaninoff, more than Busoni, who exerted the earliest and most powerful influence on his aspirations as a pianist; the fact that the same must be said of Michelangeli (just eight years Stevenson's senior) might have something to do with the reason why I've come to the view that Michelangeli is the pianist of whom Stevenson most reminds me, albeit with the added bonus of a Cherkasskian spontaneity.

I have to admit that I was quite surprised to learn years ago that Stevenson was planning to create a piano transcription of the first movement of Mahler 10, not least because he was hardly a noted Mahlerian; I'm also reminded in that context of one critic who (quite unfairly, in my view) berated this transcription as an essay in "what would Busoni have done?", to which my response would have to be "nothing!", for I cannot imagine Busoni wanting to tackle such a project at all (and, after all, he did have more than a dozen years in which to take on that challenge had he so desired).

[ahinton]

We must of course never forget the important issue of the arrangement of the movements in the Ninth.

Quoi???

No other composer, with the possible exception of Wagner, attracts such a cult following with such fierce loyalties, and that's what i find so tedious

You doubtless find it tedious becuase it IS tedious, but Mahler himself can hardly be blame either for the cult following and fierce loyalties or for the tedium that they induce in others.

It's a real shame, because Mahler was a good composer, or at least as Vaughan Williams said, a good imitation of a composer - A little unfair perhaps, but sometimes I see what he meant.

I cannot for the life of me see what Vaughan Williams meant by this, other than the creation of a memorable soundbite to which he was rarely given, I think; I cannot imagine what Schönberg, Webern, Berg, Krenek and many other major composers (as distinct from mere cult followers) would have made of RVW's comment which did and does him no favours and whcih, coming from another major symphonist, discredits him even more than it might otherwie do.

On a positive note, the song cycles are great, possibly the best of him,and I'll never forget the performance of the Third that Claudio Abbado gave at the Proms a few years ago. Just enjoy what you like, there is such a wealth of music out there to choose from.

In should perhaps have added to my remarks above about Stevenson and Mahler that Stevenson felt far more favourably disposed towards Mahler the song composer than Mahler the symphonist, although that might perhaps be due in part to Stevenson's own eschewing of the symphony and his vast and formidable contribution to song composition.

[Suffolkcoastal]

There's absolutely no reason why you should be expected to like Mahler's music, or indeed that of any other composers. For my part, I listen to the early symphonies once in a while, but then the Mahlerian neurosis and breast beating becomes to much and I retire from the battle. No doubt some will think it my loss, well so be it.

It's interesting that so far on these boards you have not found the advice you are looking for. This is par for the course, as any online mention of Mahler immediately turns into a comparative review of various performances on CD, peppered with
nostalgic memories of performances in the concert hall. It's almost as if the fans want to tell others "my choice is the best"

We must of course never forget the important issue of the arrangement of the movements in the Ninth.

No other composer, with the possible exception of Wagner, attracts such a cult following with such fierce loyalties, and that's what i find so tedious. It's a real shame, because Mahler was a good composer, or at least as Vaughan Williams said, a good imitation of a composer - A little unfair perhaps, but sometimes I see what he meant.

On a positive note, the song cycles are great, possibly the best of him,and I'll never forget the performance of the Third that Claudio Abbado gave at the Proms a few years ago. Just enjoy what you like, there is such a wealth of music out there to choose from.

I don't think I made any mention of recordings in my reply to the question ff. Anyway, I pretty much agrees with a lot of what you've said above. RVW's quote was 'a tolerable imitation of a composer' he also asked Michael Kennedy for a score of the 2nd Symphony along with scores of the " 'wrong note School' (serialists), not because his (Mahler's) notes sound wrong, they sound painfully right to me!'"