New Mahler?

Very interesting Todd, I'll have to dig out my Mahler 4th on vinyl tonight and turn the lights low. I hope Salonen gets to do it, but that is just my prejudice for my local conductor. My 4th is conducted by Abbado (sp?), i also have Rattle's version of the 10th.

Well, I'd say this is a classic case of How Not To write about a composer's work, be he Mahler or somebody else. There's probably as many mentions of Hitler in the piece as of Mahler, as if Mahler was in the business of predicting (etc) Hitler.

Herman

It makes you wonder whether there's some unfortunate spill-over from the 'Shostakovich-is-about-Stalin'-industry. If the Stalin hook has proven an excellent way to sell Shostakovich to the masses, why not try to sell some extra Mahler by pretending he's about Hitler?

Herman

Vuk and Herman, I grant you that the story is pretty bad, but one must adapt to the current news-media environment. I personally have learned to extract the facts and ignore the rest of the crap that is invariably included in the story. Basically, I read the story as "revised score for first symphony by Mahler discovered" and then "blah, blah, blah."

All told, this story is vastly superior to the local "news" coverage I must endure - about 2% news, 28% mindless tripe, and 70% opinion and editorializing. Indeed, I believe my local news dumb-asses reached the nadir of reportage earlier this year when a terrible double-murder of two girls exploded into a frenzy that included one reporter interviewing another reporter from the same station, and a reporter giving a eulogy at one of the funerals. See, you just have start tuning it out.

There's a piece by music critic Paul Griffiths in today's NYTimes on the revised score of the Mahler First that was discovered in Jerusalem recently. Griffiths took the time to compare this score with the current performing score of the First. It turns out this is a copy of the first edition from 1899 in which the composer made a number of revisions, while the performances we get to hear are always from the second edition from 1906.

Most of the revisions Mahler made in this Jerusalem score became the official standard in this second edition. So basically we are already familiar with these recently discovered revisions. According to Griffiths there are a number of markings that didn't make it to this second edition, and we can only guess why. Maybe Mahler didn't think they were so hot after all, and dropped them when he prepared the final copy for the second edition.

Herman


http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/arts/music/08GRIF.html