The Slipped Disc daily comfort zone (146): Here’s one Mahler made earlier

The Slipped Disc daily comfort zone (146): Here’s one Mahler made earlier

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norman lebrecht

August 08, 2020

A college work, played by Martha and the Maiskys.

 

Comments

  • Gustavo says:

    Shouldn’t we be discussing Seethaler’s last movement?

    It’s full of fantasies on Toblach.

    And I can’t believe that it is becoming a top seller to a readership who may not even know Mahler’s music.

  • Had Mahler converted to Catholicism at this point, because to my ears this piece contains a lot of Yiddish soul leitmotifs.

    • barry guerrero says:

      No, this was from Mahler’s student days at the conservatory in Wien in 1876. He didn’t convert until he returned to Wien to take over as Director of the Royal Opera in 1897. Becoming a Catholic was a necessity for Mahler to get and keep that gig. Mahler wrote this at the age of 16 and it was performed in 1876, both in Wien and in Iglau. It was never played again until it received its American premiere in 1964. Alma had discovered it among her manuscripts sometime in the early 1960’s. To me, it sounds a bit like Schumann. I like it.

  • Gareth Bimson says:

    Might as well listen to his Quartet because you aint going to see a performance of ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ for a long time !!

  • Joel Stein says:

    Part of the wonderful soundtrack to “Shutter Island”.

  • Edgar Self says:

    Young Mahler and his slightly older house-mate Hans Rott both entered a competition for new works, Mahler with the first movement of this puano quartet, ROTT with his Symphony in E. Bruckner was one of the judges and knew them both as students.

    Mahler won first prize but wrote an appreciation of Rott’s work, calling him the father of the new symphony as Mahler understood it and saying he could have written passages of it. Thus Rott got some attention, encouraging him to seek the disastrous interview with Brahms, who threw him out, precipitating events that led to Rott’s psychotic outburst on a train … he pulled a gun on a fellow passenger ordering him to put out his cigar, “because don’t you know Brahms has filled this train with explosives?” ,,, and confinement to the mental hospital where he died.

  • PaulD says:

    Did she also record this with the Vandellas?

  • Ludwig Van says:

    I don’t think Martha is the pianist here – I believe it is Lily Maisky.

  • Edgar Self says:

    Good night music, prompted by recent discussions, was “Knaben Wunderhorn” with most of the “Urlicht” of the “Resurrection — Felix Prohaska, Vienna Symphony, Maureen Forrester and Heinz Rehfuss, wonderfully played, enunciated. and sung — earlier Michelangeli’s live recital of Op,111, Clementi’s zany E-flat, and Scarlattis.

    The sonata had come a long way; all superbly played by a master pianist, who even without the mystique and tradition in his blood had the fingers and brain to realise it, missing little of what Schnabel and Elly Ney added. Startling to hear these and Chopin ‘s second sonata played with all the right notes. His Clementi and Scarlatti were approached by few, even Horowitz.

    Mahler grew up near parade grounds with near and distant bugles and drums, witness these and the Jjugendzeit songs, and blessings on Achim von Arnim and Clemens von Brentano for preserving the Knabel Wunderhorn. The Vanguard CD sounds great. Canadian mezzo Maureen Forrester was often Bruno Walter’s choice for Mahler. Rehfuss is the sterling Dchubert Lieder with Frank Martin, and the latter’s “Jedermann”, amd expressive Christus in Scherchen’sclassic Matthew Passion with Roessl-Maijdan and the extraordinary Cuenod, successor to Karl Erb, all gone now but green in memory.

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