Streaming the Classics: Mahler Symphonies
Do you ever type a streaming query in Roon for a classical work or artist and are overwhelmed by the choices? Rather than clicking on any old recording or the first one you see, Audiophilia will make things a little easier for you and do the heavy listening.
These choices are for streaming only. Is the best in streaming also the best vinyl recording and performance? That’s for another article.
A few criteria:
Recording must be on Apple Music, Qobuz or Tidal HiFi.
It does not have to be HiRes or MQA.
The difficulty with starting a voyage into Mahler’s work, is that Gustav the man, is rarely separated from Mahler the Composer (or Conductor). And this, in the beginning makes it difficult to explore his oeuvre.
When you listen to his Kindertotenlieder or his ‘Adagietto’, his crazy Seventh or emotionally draining Ninth, context is important. Although this is fundamental in a historical sense, in many if not all composers, in Mahler it takes a life of its own.
Alma, his wife, Bruno Walter his student and friend, Justine his sister, Austria in the 1900s; all have a complex and interesting story that contribute to Mahler and his work. Granted you don’t need to read about this, but like an opera, reading the libretto helps the enjoyment.
We ‘Mahlerites' find in Mahler a particular emotional and riveting path through his music. More than any other composer I’ve listened to, Mahler represents subjectivity; not spirituality and the collective (Bach), but the singular.
Not transcendence (Wagner), but the immediacy of the now. Not the aesthetically pleasing Brahms symphonies, but a turbulent even paranoid experience.
Not the faith of Bruckner, but a lonely closeness to nature. Love, but also death and loss, an atheistic spiritually that conveys freedom of thought, but above all, of emotion. With Mahler you not only listen to his music, but to his psychology of being in the world, and the self.
Mahler symphonies are always intense, haunting, complex and have a story to tell. Every symphony has a feeling attached to it. We all have our own subjective interpretation of them, and this is the fun part of Mahler, curiosity and exploration fill all of his works.
A child-like wonder and innocence (First and Fourth symphonies), euphoric and spiritual (Second and Eight), painful while questioning existence (the Third and the Sixth), strength and love (the Fifth) and experiencing death or transcending it (Ninth and Tenth).
Here is for me, where to start in the symphonies:
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Marcus Stenz
