We’re doing Mahler 7 this week, and I’m dazed and confused. I just can’t get my head and heart around this tough nut. I hadn’t even listened to the piece via recording all the way through until a couple weeks ago, as I was getting ready to do it. I’d heard a live performance in College Park, Maryland back in 1990 by the Toronto Symphony with Gunther Herbig and it didn’t make much of an impression on me then, as I remember. I don’t know why this is. I love nos. 1-6 and 9, but 7 and 8 leave me cold for some reason. Even the sprawling first movement of no. 3, almost a half an hour long, seems to hold more magic for me than the equally long corresponding movement of no. 7. It’s almost as though Mahler is trying out some new techniques which he abandons after the 8th is in the hopper. I’m reminded just a bit of Beethoven’s late quartets, with their episodic tendancies and emphasis on thematic development over overt melody. The logic seems more cogent in the Beethoven works, however, and the Mahler just seems to lose its way in almost every movement except the dark Scherzo. Ah, well – time to get a good book and relax. Only three more times for Mahler 7 and the end of my season.<\/p>\n
UPDATE:<\/strong> My wife came to the concert on Monday night, and she’s a fabulous musician with one of the best ears I know, and a great lover of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony.\u00c2\u00a0 She said that she’s always seen it as a titanic battle between darkness and light, and that that is what dictates the necessarily schizoid structure.\u00c2\u00a0 After our final performance in Salem last night, I’m leaning in the direction of her assessment, and coming to like the piece more and more. We’re doing Mahler 7 this week, and I’m dazed and confused. I just can’t get my head and heart around this tough nut. I hadn’t even listened to the piece via recording all the way through until a couple weeks ago, as I was getting ready to do it. I’d heard a live performance in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[55,62,3656],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-orchestra","tag-symphony","tag-the-orchestra-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sa8kC-mahleria","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":934,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/19\/a-few-old-school-mahlers-9th-recordings\/","url_meta":{"origin":40,"position":0},"title":"A few old-school Mahler’s 9th recordings","author":"Jeffrey Work","date":"April 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm pleased to welcome as my first guest blogger Jeffrey Work, principal trumpet of the Oregon Symphony. He, among other things, is an enthusiastic collector of old recordings, and as such, I thought that he might like to delve into his massive collection and give us some nuggets that relate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4674,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/19\/a-mahler-apperitif\/","url_meta":{"origin":40,"position":1},"title":"a mahler ap\u00e9ritif","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A portion of the last movement of Mahler's First Symphony with Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic.","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13597,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2014\/11\/10\/are-you-ready-for-mahler-5\/","url_meta":{"origin":40,"position":2},"title":"Are you ready for mahler 5?","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I love Mahler. Like Strauss, it's the kind of music that the modern string player (or any instrumentalist in a symphony orchestra, for that matter) has trained for their entire life. The technical and musical demands are many, especially in this - perhaps the most popular - wonderfully complex and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "concert preview"","block_context":{"text":"concert preview","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/concert-preview\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/K1BHmPhZwpY\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":936,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/21\/mahler-9-iii-rondo-burleske\/","url_meta":{"origin":40,"position":3},"title":"mahler 9 – III. Rondo. Burleske.","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What would a Mahler symphony be without a sprawling, hectic, and by turns achingly beautiful scherzo? Well, quite a bit shorter, for one. Mahler is often in the habit of taking a huge movement in cut time and making a huge journey out of it, and the Ninth Symphony is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14490,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2017\/05\/21\/a-mahler-for-the-ages\/","url_meta":{"origin":40,"position":4},"title":"a mahler for the ages","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Quick\u00a0bulletin: if you don't have plans for this Monday night (May 22), make a point of coming out to the Oregon Symphony's closing classical concert of the season: Mahler's Second Symphony. Judging by how the first two performances have gone, this final one should be epic. Onstage brass, offstage brass,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/OoZdwam7wgw\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2965,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/08\/10\/kalmar-and-grant-park-do-mahler-9\/","url_meta":{"origin":40,"position":5},"title":"kalmar and grant park do mahler 9","author":"Charles Noble","date":"August 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The OSO's music director Carlos Kalmar has demonstrated an affinity for the music of Gustav Mahler throughout his tenure with the orchestra, usually opening or closing a season with a major work of the Austrian composer.\u00a0 This year, at his other gig, Kalmar began the home stretch of the season\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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