Born: July 7, 1860; Czech Republic
Died: May 18, 1911; Austria
Period: Romantic
"Imagine the universe beginning to sing and resound," Mahler wrote of his Symphony No. 8, the "Symphony of a Thousand." "It is no longer human voices; it is planets and suns revolving." Mahler was late Romantic music's ultimate big thinker. In his own lifetime he was generally regarded as a conductor who composed on the side, producing huge, bizarre symphonies accepted only by a cult following.
Born in 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia, he cameRead more from a middle-class family. He entered the Vienna Conservatory in 1875, studying piano, harmony, and composition in a musically conservative atmosphere. Nevertheless, he became a supporter of Wagner and Bruckner, both of whose works he would later conduct frequently, and became part of a social circle interested in socialism, Nietzschean philosophy, and pan-Germanism. Around 1880, he began conducting and wrote his first mature work, Das klagende Lied. Mahler's conducting career advanced rapidly, moving him from Kassel to Prague to Leipzig to Budapest; he was usually either greatly respected or thoroughly despised by the performers for his exacting rehearsals and perfectionism. In 1897 he became music director of the Vienna Court Opera and then, a year later, of the Vienna Philharmonic. Mahler's conducting career permitted composition only during the summers, in a series of "composing huts" he had built in picturesque rural locations. He completed his first symphony in 1888, but it met with utter audience incomprehension. He reserved this time for symphonies, all of them large-scale works, and song cycles. In Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), he merged the two forms into an immense song-symphony. The Viennese public largely failed to understand his music, but Mahler took their reactions calmly, accurately predicting that "My time will yet come." Meanwhile, his autocratic ways as a conductor alienated musicians. In 1901, the press and the musicians essentially forced his resignation from the Philharmonic. He married a young composition student, Alma Schindler in 1902, and they soon had two daughters. By 1907 Mahler was increasingly away from Vienna, conducting his own works, and thus he resigned from the opera as well. Just after accepting the position of principal conductor of New York's Metropolitan Opera, but before leaving Vienna, Mahler's older daughter, age 4, died from scarlet fever and diphtheria, and he learned he himself had a defective heart valve. In New York, he was impressed by the caliber of talent and quickly gained audience approval. In 1909 he became conductor of the New York Philharmonic, which he found much more agreeable than the opera work by this time. The following year, he had a triumphant premiere of his massive Symphony No. 8 in Munich. Despite the professional successes, his personal life suffered another blow when his and Alma's marriage began having problems. They stayed together, and after he became ill in February 1911, she saw to it that he made it back to Vienna, where he died on May 18.
The conductors Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Willem Mengelberg, and Maurice Abravanel kept Mahler's legacy alive, and Mahler's are now among the most recorded of any symphonies. His frequent incorporation of vocal elements into symphonic writing brought to full fruition a process that had begun with Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, demonstrating his music's firm roots in the Germanic classical tradition. However, it was his huge tapestries of shifting moods and tones, ranging from tragedy to bitter irony (often explicitly indicated in performance directions), from café music to evocations of the sublime, that portended a century in which multiplicity ruled. Read less
Label: Ica Classics
Catalog: 5133
Release Date: 10/28/2014
Number of Discs: 5
Composer:
Gustav Mahler,
Richard Strauss,
Robert Schumann
Conductor:
Erich Leinsdorf,
Kurt Sanderling,
Hartmut Haenchen,
Michael Tilson Thomas
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Boston Symphony Orchestra,
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra,
La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra
...
Label: Decca
Catalog: 002188302
Release Date: 10/27/2014
Number of Discs: 41
Composer:
John Philip Sousa,
Charles A. Zimmerman,
Francis S. Van Boskerck,
George Norton
...
Performer:
Stanley Black,
David Parkhouse,
Alan Loveday,
Robert Merrill
...
Conductor:
Rodney Bashford,
Stanley Black,
Bernard Herrmann,
Edward Downes
...
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Grenadier Guards Band,
London Festival Orchestra,
London Festival Recording Ensemble
...
Label: C Major
Catalog: 716908
Release Date: 07/29/2014
Number of Discs: 1
Composer:
Gustav Mahler,
George Gershwin,
Leonard Bernstein,
Johann Strauss Sr.
...
Conductor:
Simon Rattle,
Jesús Parra
Orchestra/Ensemble:
National Children's Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela,
White Hands Choir of Venezuela
Label: C Major
Catalog: 717004
Release Date: 07/29/2014
Number of Discs: 1
Composer:
Gustav Mahler,
George Gershwin,
Leonard Bernstein,
Johann Strauss Sr.
...
Conductor:
Simon Rattle,
Jesús Parra
Orchestra/Ensemble:
National Children's Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela,
White Hands Choir of Venezuela
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalog: 00206510
Release Date: 07/08/2014
Number of Discs: 11
Composer:
Gustav Mahler,
Alban Berg
Performer:
Eteri Gvazava,
Anna Larsson,
Renée Fleming,
Guy Braunstein
...
Conductor:
Claudio Abbado
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
Orféon Donostiarra,
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
...
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalog: 002054802
Release Date: 06/24/2014
Number of Discs: 1
Composer:
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Robert Schumann,
Antonín Dvorák,
Gustav Mahler
Performer:
Helen Donath,
Teresa Berganza,
Wieslaw Ochman,
Thomas Stewart
...
Conductor:
Rafael Kubelik
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra,
Cleveland Orchestra,
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
...
Recommendation
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalog: 002054602
Release Date: 06/03/2014
Number of Discs: 56
Composer:
Giovanni Battista Sammartini,
Johann Wenzel Stamitz,
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf,
Johann Christian Bach
...
Performer:
Dame Gwyneth Jones,
Hanna Schwarz,
René Kollo,
Kurt Moll
...
Conductor:
Kevin Mallon,
Christopher Hogwood,
Thomas Füri,
Sir Neville Marriner
...
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Aradia Ensemble,
Academy of Ancient Music,
Camerata Bern
...
Label: Rca
Catalog: 300350
Release Date: 05/13/2014
Number of Discs: 60
Composer:
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Richard Strauss,
Sergei Rachmaninov,
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
...
Performer:
Artur Rubinstein,
Byron Janis,
Gary Graffman,
Vladimir Horowitz
...
Conductor:
Josef Krips,
Fritz Reiner,
Pierre Monteux,
Charles Munch
...
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Symphony of the Air,
Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
Boston Symphony Orchestra
...
Label: Rca
Catalog: 7686092
Release Date: 03/25/2014
Number of Discs: 10
Composer:
Gustav Mahler
Performer:
Marilyn Horne,
Judith Blegen
Conductor:
James Levine
Orchestra/Ensemble:
London Symphony Orchestra,
Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
Chicago Symphony Chorus
...
Recommendation
Label: Decca
Catalog: 002010702
Release Date: 03/11/2014
Number of Discs: 36
Composer:
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Johannes Brahms,
Anton Bruckner,
Gustav Mahler
...
Performer:
Lucia Popp,
Carolyn Watkinson,
Peter Schreier,
Robert Holl
...
Conductor:
Bernard Haitink
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra,
Netherlands Radio Chorus,
St. Willibrod Boy's Choir
...
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalog: 001999302
Release Date: 02/18/2014
Number of Discs: 40
Composer:
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Franz Joseph Haydn,
Gustav Mahler
...
Performer:
Sena Jurinac,
Lucretia West,
Hans Loeffler,
Frederick Guthrie
...
Conductor:
Hermann Scherchen,
Pierre Monteux,
René Leibowitz,
Erich Leinsdorf
...
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra,
Vienna State Opera Orchestra,
Vienna Academy Chamber Chorus
...
Label: Hänssler Classic
Catalog: 93313
Release Date: 01/28/2014
Number of Discs: 10
Composer:
Franz Schubert,
Hector Berlioz,
Felix Mendelssohn,
Anton Bruckner
...
Performer:
Anu Komsi
Conductor:
Roger Norrington
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra,
Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra,
Stuttgart Radio Orchestra
Recommendation
Label: Warner Classics
Catalog: 317522
Release Date: 12/03/2013
Number of Discs: 4
Composer:
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Hector Berlioz,
Johannes Brahms,
Anton Bruckner
...
Conductor:
Carlo Maria Giulini
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Recommendation
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalog: 001931702
Release Date: 11/19/2013
Number of Discs: 14
Composer:
Gustav Mahler
Performer:
Johan Botha,
Dorothea Röschmann,
Anna Larsson,
Christian Gerhaher
...
Conductor:
Pierre Boulez
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra,
Vienna State Opera Chorus Konzertvereinigung,
Cleveland Orchestra
...
Recommendation