Word: mahlers
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...techniques that were once startling--head-banging, repetition, shouting--became familiar, I found myself longing for something genuinely risky--a violent gesture, or a vulnerable one, anything that would seem like a payoff to all the build-up. Instead, the show's climax is a laughable quotation from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, as if the famous fanfare could create drama in an essentially static piece...
...took 15 years, however, for Mahler to grow into an obsession. In the meantime, Kaplan had founded the investment magazine that made his fortune, and thus had the financial underpinning for what seemed an impossible leap: from Mahler fan to Mahler interpreter. "At age 40, I woke up one morning and knew in my mind that I was going to conduct this piece," says Kaplan...
Never mind that Kaplan's invitation had come directly from Hans Landesmann, who oversees the festival's symphonic programming. Never mind that BMG's Conifer Classics will issue a September release in the U.S. of The Kaplan Mahler Edition, a double CD that includes Kaplan's best-selling recording of the Resurrection Symphony; the Mahler Piano Rolls; and recollections of Mahler by his contemporaries, as well as a CD-ROM component that features photos from Kaplan's book The Mahler Album...
...waving a baton at them. If Kaplan at Salzburg did not bring to mind a slick stick like Riccardo Muti or Valery Gergiev, his intense, attentive manner in front of the Philharmonia, the Vienna State Opera Chorus, mezzo-soprano Doris Soffel and soprano Rosa Mannion bespoke a firm grasp. Mahler's heaven-storming climaxes shook the Grossesfestspielhaus to its granite foundations, and anyone who did not feel a chill at the tremendous peroration must either have been dead or Austrian...
Although Kaplan is much in demand--he has made 10 appearances in the past year--he harbors no illusions about making conducting a second career. He donates his fees to charity and turns down invitations to lead other Mahler works, most recently a Das Lied von der Erde in Vienna. "I don't regard myself as a conductor," he says. "The driving force with me was always the music." In this day of bored, globe-trotting professionals, those are sentiments to be resurrected...