I’m up at the house on an overcast and drizzly early-summer afternoon, and amidst a chorus of twittering birds outside the opened living room windows, I’ve been listening to various Mahler symphonies. 

With Mahler’s 150th birthday celebrations fast approaching (he was born in Kaliste, Bohemia – now the Czech Republic, on July 7, 1860), “Mahlermania” will no doubt pick up steam, so he’s been on my mind more than he usually is.  A few weeks ago, I paid tribute to Mahler with a blog for Huffington Post about his “life-changing” music. The intention was to encourage people who still hadn’t heard Mahler’s music to give it a try.  But I’ve also discovered some great recordings recently that I wanted to recommend to Mahler enthusiasts who visit Gramophone’s website.

Amazingly I only heard one live Mahler performance this season:  in September, Alan Gilbert (a client of my company, 21C Media Group) gave a performance of the Third Symphony with the New York Philharmonic, the first subscription concert in his inaugural season as Music Director. The Philharmonic’s beautiful playing – the sublime post-horn solos were especially memorable) – and the joyousness of the occasion, are very happy memories in a season full of them.

As for Mahler recordings, I added a few gems to my already embarrassingly large collection. Among the new encounters, one of the most intense was my discovery, during our annual first day of summer party, of Semyon Bychkov’s Mahler 3 with Cologne’s WDR Symphony (link to Amazon). From what I could tell from a single hearing – refracted through a pitcher of home-made white sangria that I was sharing with my fellow Solstice-revelers) – this was Mahler stripped of much of his “Gemütlichkeit,” a kind of abstract approach to this work I had never experienced before. Smartly, the liner notes talked more about the work’s structure than its often-emphasized program, enhancing my understanding of Bychkov’s approach. 

While the performance seemed to lack some of the sweetness and innocence that are no doubt a significant part of this youthful work, I found myself riveted by it. I wouldn’t recommend it as a first choice for this symphony, but for the serious Mahler lover I think it’s something that should be heard. It clears your head of its ideas about Mahler, a somewhat unsettling but very exciting experience. My only quibble is that the final track is followed by a work by York Höller, and it was a jarring experience going from the transcendent glow of the symphony’s final chords to an entirely different work. 

I’ve also been sampling discs in EMI Classics’ new 150th anniversary boxed set (EMI Classics is also a client of 21C Media Group).  This afternoon I listened to the Tennstedt recording of Mahler’s Fifth (Amazon) and Rattle’s performance of Mahler’s Seventh (Amazon). Both were very strong live performances (both ending with audience applause). Tennstedt’s Mahler Eighth (Amazon) remains my favorite in that work, so I had expected his Fifth to be special, and it was. I found Rattle’s Mahler Seven enormously compelling, and well recorded. Rattle pushed the symphony ahead and maintained a great sense of forward momentum, and some of the work’s seemingly problematic transitions were brilliantly handled. Both recordings are keepers. 

In addition to all my Mahler listening, I’ve been making my way through Mahler: Letters to His Wife (Cornell University Press) - Amazon. When I first discovered Mahler’s music I read almost a dozen books about him in the course of a couple of years – including an installment of Henry-Louis de la Grange’s epic biography – but this collection of letters (edited by de la Grange and Gunter Weiss, in collaboration with Knud Martner) is the first Mahler book I’ve read in a decade. It’s essential for the Mahler enthusiast: revealing, sometimes enormously funny, and rich in the composer’s hard-won wisdom about music and life. Like his music, Mahler’s letters similarly reveal a man of enormous passion and wide-ranging inspirations. Though he is often condescending to his young wife, Alma, responding to her letters at times like a teacher grading his student’s essays, he is also capable of making fun of himself and his personal foibles.

Among the funnier moments are his sardonic comments on some of the personalities and works of his fellow composers, most famously Richard Strauss. But he also has fun dressing down a few others. Having left before the end of a performance of Puccini’s Tosca, he calls the score “a masterly sham,” adding, “Nowadays every shoemaker’s apprentice is an orchestrator of genius.” 

After immersing himself in chamber music by Brahms, he calls much of it “sterile note-spinning,” noting, “What a puny figure he cuts, and how narrow-minded. Good Lord, just think of the force with which the genius of Richard Wagner must have struck him. He must have turned every penny in his pocket of ideas twice over, just to scrape by!” Pfitzner fares worst of all: “A strong sense of atmosphere and very interesting range of orchestral colours. But too shapeless and vague. A ‘perpetual’ jelly and primeval slime, constantly calling for life but unable to gestate.” Alma lands her own punch early on when, after hearing Mahler’s music for the first time – the First Symphony – she describes it as “an ear-splitting, nerve-shattering din.”

But what I love most about the book – besides Mahler’s personal insights into his works – is his acceptance of his difficulties and his eloquent way of explaining why nature played such a key role in his spiritual life. In one letter to Alma he writes, “I have spent the past fifteen years battling against superficiality and incomprehension, bringing down on me all the troubles, indeed all the miseries of the trail-blazer. – The main thing is that you should go your way unwaveringly, in life as in art, allowing yourself to be distracted neither by failure nor acclaim.” 

Then, in a later letter: “When one spends longer periods on one’s own, one comes to forge a unity with nature – admittedly a more tranquil ‘surrounding’ than the people to whom one is accustomed. This state of mind engenders a positive outlook (as opposed to our normal attitude, which is a quagmire of negations) and, in the long run, a creative one. This is only normal. Isolation hence helps us to find ourselves, and from there it is but a small step to God.”

Amen to that!  And Happy Birthday Gustav!