Word: mahlers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last week Mahler's widow, now living in Beverly Hills, Calif., published a biography of her husband (Gustav Mahler, Memories and Letters; Viking, $5). She first wrote her book seven years ago, published it in Amsterdam in 1940. Shortly afterwards she escaped to the U.S. with her third husband, Austrian Novelist Franz (Song of Bernadette) Werfelt† whom she met in 1917 when he was in the Czech army, married in 1918. Like many another Mahler partisan, Alma Mahler admitted that she wasn't always able to understand Mahler's music...
...York she heard her first husband's symphonies-banned by the Nazis -conducted by Viennese alumni like Bruno Walter, who is most responsible for Mahler's U.S. popularity. He has played Mahler every season for 23 years. Said he last week: "[Mahler] is gradually coming into his own in American life. In the fall I will go to London, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Zurich and I will play Mahler. I will go on with Mahler as long as God will permit...
Save Your Fury. Mahler's widow, now in her sixties, was a 20-year-old counterpoint student when she married the slight, 41-year-old opera conductor. His ferociousness in the orchestra pit was already a legend. By abolishing the claque and ordering latecomers toa special box, Mahler had angered performers and audiences alike. Once the musicians stubbornly refused to rehearse another note, and Mahler barked: "Gentlemen, keep your fury for the performance. Then at last we shall have [it] played as it should...
...only other Austrian of Mahler's musical stature was Richard Strauss. The Mahlers and Strausses shared a box at the opening of Strauss's opera, Feuersnot. Writes Alma Mahler: "Strauss thought of nothing but money ... the whole time he had a pencil in his hand. . . . [He] calculated his profits to the last penny." Strauss's formidable wife, Pauline, said to Mahler: "My God, for a million-well no, that's not enough-five million! And then Richard can stop manufacturing music...
...Mahler had few good words for his contemporaries. Of Puccini he said (after a performance of Tosca): "Nowadays any bungler orchestrates to perfection"; of Sibelius: "The most hackneyed clichés were served up with harmonizations in the 'Nordic' style"; and of Strauss: "A heap of slag...