In search of the real Mahler

Norman Lebrecht

● THE DAY THE QUEEN DIED I was supposed to be in the high Dolomites, listening to young musicians wrestle with Gustav Mahler’s ninth symphony on original instruments. Mahler composed his last two symphonies in the summers of 1909-10 near the mountain resort of Toblach (Dobbiaco) and, while he did not live to hear them performed, he knew exactly how he wanted them to sound. Mahler was a stickler for timbre. As director of the Vienna Opera, he replaced all the orchestra’s wind, brass and percussion instruments, declaring them unsuited to the volume, velocity and sophistication of Richard Strauss’s shocking new operas and his own universalist symphonies, drifting as they were to the brink of atonality. Other traditions were left unchanged. His violinists used no shoulder rest and cellists played…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2022

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