AudioRoundTable.com - RDF feed
type: channel
description: Audio advice and discussions with audiophiles and professionals. Free discussion forums, open to all and frequented by industry experts. Ask questions and get advice on stereos, speakers, hi-end amplifiers, pre-amps, home theater, tube hi-fi, turntables, vinyl, tweaks, music, films, video, DVDs and more.
items: Today's Recommendation: Gustav Mahler
items: Re: Today's Recommendation: Gustav Mahler

Today's Recommendation: Gustav Mahler
type: item
description: For those of you who may just be dipping your toe into classical music – with Bach, say, or Beethoven – Gustav Mahler is too much. His symphonies are too long, too episodic, too disjointed, too contradictory, too jumbled, too weird. I don’t care. I just can’t bear to post six or seven reviews without including a recommendation of the composer I love the most. Gustav Mahler was born in 1860 in Kaliste, Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Although Jewish, he became a leading conductor in Central Europe, working his way up from regional ensembles in Austria-Hungary and Germany to the prestigious Vienna Court Opera, the center of the musical world, in 1897 (he had to convert to Roman Catholicism to get the job). After serving in that post for ten years, he came under increasingly vicious anti-semitic attacks, which he escaped by accepting offers of employment in New York as conductor of the Metropolitan Opera (1908) and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (1909-11). In 1901 he met and in 1902 married 23 year-old Alma Schindler, beautiful, vivacious and mercurial. About her, Tom Lehrer quite accurately wrote: The loveliest girl in Vienna Was Alma, the smartest as well. Once you picked her up on your antenna, You’d never be free of her spell. Mahler was smitten the first time he met her, and some of his most beautiful music reflects his deep love for her (most famously the Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony, written in 1901-02). He also experienced tragedy in the death of a young daughter in 1907, likewise reflected in his late symphonies. That same year, Mahler was diagnosed with having serious heart disease and was told he could die at any time. After returning to Europe from New York in April 1911, he died the following month in Vienna. All the while, Mahler was also composing. As the years progressed, he developed a fairly regular schedule. After the conclusion of the conducting season he repaired to Southern Austria and the A…
creator: elektratig
date: 2005-04-19T14:16:17-00:00

Re: Today's Recommendation: Gustav Mahler
type: item
description: Excellent. Thanks for the interesting review and recommendation. I'm getting out the plastic now, Amazon, here I come...
creator: Wayne Parham
date: 2005-04-19T19:22:01-00:00

Re: Today's Recommendation: Gustav Mahler
type: item
description: Well; we need some time to digest this one. It's printing out as we speak. The Shostakovich BTW is rapidly becoming a big favorite over here.
creator: Manualblock
date: 2005-04-20T12:54:45-00:00