1. Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 1 D-Maj
CSO Rehearsal
June 4, 2014

2. Neurotic and Tourtured Genius
Born in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic) the son of a Jewish liquor distiller. Mahler got started early on a life of anguish.
“And what do you want to be when you grow up, little boy?” asked a kindly passerby, “A martyr,” he replied
His life was dominated by tradegy
David Pogue and Scott Speck “Classical Music for Dummies

3. Neurotic and Tortured Genius
Mahler’s daughter died of scarlet fever (for which the superstitous Mahler felt guilty) He had just composed a set o songs called on the Death of Children
Mahler himself had a very weak heart, making himelf obsessed with death.
From the beginning, Mahler felt alienated. “I am three times homeless: as a Bohemian native in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew all over the world.”

4. Neurotic and Tortured Genius
His upbringing was full of disturbing moments wa
Father was a cruel man, regularly abused the family, especially Mahler’s mother.
After one painful episode of abuses, the young Mahler ran from his house, unable to take it any more. Just as he got to the street a hurly-gurdy was playing a popular Viennese drinking song.
Later in a psychotherapy session with Sigmund Freud, Mahler realizes that this episode had caused him to associate nappy, trivial music with great tragedy.

5. Neurotic and Tortured Genius
Actually, most of Mahler’s music is full of such contrasts: quick alternations of loud and soft or high and low:
Instruments screaming at the extremes of their range:
Moments of ethereal beauty, range and torment:
Desolation and Triumph:
Some of his symphonies end in hair razing blazes of glory.

6. Conductor
Mahler became a shockingly busy (and demanding) opera conductor.
At one point he conducted both the Vienna State Opera and New York’s Metropolitan Opera
He didn’t just conduct the music; he attacked it, lunged at it, and absolutely became it.
A bit of trivia: Some believe Mahler was responsible for including Beethoven's Leonora Overture #3 between the scenes of Act 2 of Fidelio; Beethoven’s only opera. May now be a bit debunked.

7. Conductor vs. Composer
His devotion to the highest standards of music-making drove him to exhaustion and collapse, but they won him universal admiration and suvvess as a conductor.
His compositions on yhe other hnd didn’t do so well at first
It took later conductors like Leonard Burnstein, one of Mahler’s greatest champions, to bring his work to international prominence.

8. Johanna Richter
A soprano, destined for fame not as a singer, but as the inspiration for Mahler's first true masterpiece, the Songs of s Wayfarer, and as a stimulus for his 1st Symphony.
Mahler had gone to Kassel in 1884 as a conductor, but found the working conditions unsatisfactory.
Whatever he missed in his work he gained in life and love. Johanna Richter --or more precisely, unreturned love-- unlocked Mahler's deepest feelings that year and set his course, not as an accomplished conductor, which he surely was, but as a composer of vision and daring.
It took the rest of the musical establishment a while to see it that way.

9. Symphony No. 1 Dmaj
Gustav Mahler

10. 1st Movement – Langsam Schleppend
Fairly slow, dragging

11. Symphony No. 1 Dmaj
Gustav Mahler

12. 2nd Movement – Kraftig Bewegt
Strong, choppy

13. Symphony No. 1 Dmaj
Gustav Mahler

14. 3rd Movement – Feierlich und Gemesessen, Ohne Zu Schleppen
Solem, serious, but not too draggy (measured)

15. Symphony No. 1 Dmaj
Gustav Mahler

16. 4th Movement – Stuermisch Bewgt
Fierce, strong