Word: mahlers
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...Gustav Mahler received a death sentence. Although mortality had already permeated the composer's household (Mahler's beloved daughter died of scarlet fever a year before), his family was not destined to hang up their mourning garb quite yet. Another death was imminent. During a routine doctor's examination, Mahler was diagnosed with a fatal heart defect. Confronted with his mortality, Mahler was consoled by a new vision--immortality. His heart, his body and his memory would erode. His music, however, would not. Mahler was set to compose his legacy. His ink was his effigy; his fear of death...
Although it is not easy for performers to capture Mahler's spirit in any of his compositions, his final pieces are especially challenging. Mahler's repertoire requires spiritual empathy as well as technical delicacy. A conductor must look at life and try to see what Mahler saw--a combination of fear, ennui and child-like wonder. Unsurprisingly, an exquisite performance of Mahler is moving--but rare. And so, when conductor Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (B.S.O.) performed one of Mahler's final (and arguably, most perfect) pieces, the vocal accompanied Das Lied von der Erde (The Song...
...need to choose a repertoire filled with the lite classical music that we hear in television commercials and Au Bon Pain's front foyer. His allegiance is not to music that is popular, but to music that is earth-shattering. And indeed, the BSO's last concert, featuring Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde and Bela Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin, might have been earth-shattering enough to crack fault lines into Symphony Hall...
...highlight of the concert, however, came after intermission with the performance of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, his adaptation of Hans Bethge's collection of translated poems The Chinese Flute. At this point, Ozawa was not only conducting the BSO, but also two singers, Ben Heppner and Thomas Quastoff, who rounded out the tenor and bass-baritone voice parts. The work was divided into five parts that explored a different facet of Mahler's self-contemplation. In the first piece, known as the "drinking song," a man laments that "Dark is life, dark is death" and copes...
...Mann was a forceful and eloquent proponent of health and human rights," said Halfdan T. Mahler, who worked with Mann...