But I mean certainly Mahler had obstacles in his life: work, religion, his marriage, the death of his children, his condition – his heart condition, working at the state opera which was a job that nobody had survived. But this autobiographical thing was something that they understood at that time, and Mahler more than anybody else, that to pit yourself against an obstacle was a fantastic storyline – whether it was for opera or it was even better for symphony because it could all be in the imagination, I mean there’s almost a donkey shot quality, it’s all in one’s mind. You know, constant discussion, often polemic to the nth degree, as everything in his life. You’ve got to remember that the conductors of that time, especially the great conductors, also would stage, they would do the whole thing, so every facet of the theatrical experience and of the storytelling experience, was something that was a huge pre-occupation in Mahler’s life, not to mention his interests in anything literary, and the crowd, the company he kept. One of the great opera conductors, theatre personalities. The annotations on the scores are so precise, he not only tells you what he wants, but how he wants you to achieve it in a way.ĪP: Well this is one of the great composers of our, well of any time. Somehow autobiographical desires of composers like Mahler and Strauss, to use themselves as the picture of the hero, and to torture themselves.ĮS: It’s one of the reasons why it’s such subjective music, you have to inhabit it in order to perform it. All this coinciding with the development of Freud in Vienna’s time – why do we do what we do – nature, Wagner, the expression of the hero. Therefore, the music in a certain way hurts, and it’s supposed to. And not only going to the dark side but probing the dark side, like putting your finger in a wound and keeping it there. It’s only when you start to go to the extremes, where there’s the extremes of the pastoral, lyrical qualities, the extreme dreaminess, the extreme dark side of things. I mean to say you’re put through the ringers is surely an understatement. Mahler is not, or when he is, he’s parodying.ĮS: He takes all those Austro-German traditions to the nth degree, doesn’t he?ĮS: He pushes them as far as he can push them.ĪP: I think the exhaustion one feels after conducting and certainly playing some of the music, is something that really was new. Always elegant, somehow always linked to the traditions of Mozart. I think some of it has to do with the almost embarrassing rawness of some of the music, whereas somebody like Richard Strauss, the music is so even at it’s most violent or most dramatic or most neurotic, still has an element of, it’s more decadent. Somehow, it took a while for that institution to claim Gustav Mahler as their own. Our subject? Gustav Mahler.ĮS: Tony, Mahler always said his time would come, and indeed it did and he’s been big box office for many years now, but even as late as the 1960s when people like Leonard Bernstein were advocating his music, the take-up was still quite slow and I wonder whether you think that was to do with simply exposure, or fashion because it was, it is, highly emotive music?ĪP: Well it’s very interesting that Leonard Bernstein had to push the hardest in Vienna of all places, and with the Vienna Philharmonic. This time, we have another episode from our Composer Focus series from November 2018, as Sir Antonio Pappano, Music Director of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, guides us through the life and music of Gustav Mahler.ĮS: Today I’m joined by Antonio Pappano, Music Director of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Barbican: Hello and welcome to Nothing Concrete, the Barbican podcast.
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