Joseph Horowitz's Blog, page 10

Translating Schubert — “Clairvoyance or Somnambulism”

Igal Perry as Schubert’s Leiermann.

How reckon with late Schubert? It inhabits a timeless musical precinct unto itself. 

The pianist Claudio Claudio Arrau (in my book Conversations with Arrau) applied the term “Todesnähe” – a proximity to death. After Schubert (born in 1797) contracted syphilis in 1822 or 1823, his intimacy with death ripened. In 1824 he wrote: “I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who, in sheer despair over this, ever makes things worse and worse, instead of better.”

But there is more than that. Late in his short life (he died in 1828), Schubert’s characteristic morbidity turned uncanny.  A late Schubert song like “Der Doppelganger” projects a Dostoyevskian derangement.

I long ago proposed to my friend the bass trombonist David Taylor that “Doppelganger” would suit his extreme virtuosity – which complements extreme states of feeling. He first performed “Doppelganger” at the Musikverein in Vienna. The response was fortifying.

More recently, Taylor and I have been reading Mahler songs. The result is a five-song cycle for bass trombone and piano that I call “Einsamkeit.” The songs are by Mahler and Schubert. They begin with a jilted lover. Each maps a more advanced state of existential solitude:

Mahler: Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht

Schubert: Die Stadt

Schubert: Der Doppelganger

Schubert: Die Nebensonnen 

Schubert: Der Leiermann 

I cajoled the Israeli-American choreographer Igal Perry to turn this 20-minute cycle (our tempos are very deliberate) into a dance piece. I have known and worked with Igal for more than a decade. I wanted him to dance the Leiermann — the final song of Schubert’s cycle Die Winterreise. And so he did – last weekend, with his Peridance Contemporary Dance Company.

Richard Capell, in his peerless Schubert’s Songs (1928), says of “Der Leiermann” (“The Hurdy-Gurdy Man”): “A madman meets a beggar, links with him his fortune, and the two disappear into the snowy landscape . . . We may read anything or nothing much into the cleared scene.” Capell also writes that it is “the last turning of the wintry road – a chance encounter to which no purpose had led, but there, and so not refused by our poet and musician.”

Counter-intuitively, Igal’s Leiermann wore a white suit. But his gaunt, angular presence registered – instantly — a distressed gravitas. His impersonation was all depth; his disjunct gestures were minimal, almost incidental.

At the end of Schubert’s song, the singer addresses the Leiermann: 

Strange old man,
shall I go with you?
Will you turn your hurdy-gurdy 
to my songs?

For this naked summons I had Taylor unmute his horn. Perry’s Leiermann strayed upstage and mounted a staircase to a vacant window, in which he became a silhouette.

Johann Michael Vogl, the most eminent contemporary exponent of Schubert’s songs, wrote after Schubert died that his compositions were products “not of conscious action” but “of providence,” that they occupy “a state of clairvoyance or somnambulism.”

David Taylor and I next perform “Einsamkeit” – with subtitles, sans dancers – at the Brevard (N.C.) Music Festival on July 6. 

Mahler and the NY Philharmonic — and the Pertinence of his “Failure” Today

This coming Tuesday night, I will be chatting for two hours with Bill McGlaughlin and Dave Osenberg on WWFM about Mahler in New York. The show will be streamed live at www.wwfm.org from 7 to 9 pm ET.

The topic is my new novel, The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York, about which Bill has written:

“This book is a tremendous achievement. . . . For the first time in my experience, Alma Mahler emerged not as a stick figure in the margins of the story, but central. Wayward, mercurial, fascinating, devoted to her husband and yet living (and concealing) her own life. As I read I became increasingly fond of her and sympathetic in a way that was new to me. . . . Mahler is now heard around the world. And this book deepens our experience and satisfaction and love.”

We’ll be sampling interviews with musicians who played under Mahler with the New York Philharmonic (1909-1911) – and also historic Mahler recordings by Oskar Fried and Dimitri Mitropoulos. 

And we’ll explore the stormy relationship between Mahler and Henry Krehbiel, the formidable “dean” of  New York City’s music critics, who notoriously called Mahler’s New York tenure a “failure.” What did he mean by that? What’s its pertinence right now, when orchestras are struggling to redefine their mission and that of their “music director”?

Tune in and find out.

“A Brave Experiment” and “Profound Journey” (by a Previously Tendentious Author)

Writers discover quickly that their books – any books – have no fixed meanings. They will read differently to different readers. And their printed words never precisely convey an author’s  thoughts and stories.

Processing the response to my first novel – The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York – I now further discover that fictionalized characters and events all the more elude authorial control. 

My good friend Bill McGlaughlin (esteemed conductor/inimitable broadcaster) writes to me of Henry Krehbiel – alongside Gustav and Alma, one of the three main characters in my historical fiction: “Has there ever been a bigger blowhard, stuffed fat with his own self-importance?” 

I wrote back: “Bill, I LIKE Krehbiel.”

Bill: “I know that!”

Henry Edward Krehbiel

Bill also writes: “For the first time in my experience, Alma Schindler/Mahler/Gropius/Werfel emerged not as a stick figure in the margins of the story, but central . . . As I read I became increasingly fond of her and sympathetic in a way that was new to me.” 

Similarly: Peter Davison, in a review just posted, writes: “The most striking insights of The Marriage are about Alma.”

And yet I did not purposely undertake a newly compassionate portrait of Alma.

What I absorb from these responses (both of which begot further responses via email) is that Henry Krehbiel, in my book, stands on his own two feet, as does Alma Mahler on hers. Davison added: “Readers will respond according to their own feelings . . . because you are not steering them towards any particular judgments.” 

Anyone familiar with my previous eleven books – anyone familiar with me, period — will appreciate that all my life I have been steering people towards particular judgments. And I now discover within myself novelist who does not do that. I marvel at this wholly unconscious transformation.

I share more of what Peter and Bill wrote below.

From Peter Davison’s review:

We are offered by the author a portrait of Mahler that is real. . . .

The most striking insights of The Marriage are about Alma. . . .  The book lays bare the paradoxes of Mahler’s character which Alma had patiently to endure. His hypersensitivity and infantile insecurities co-existed with a tyrannical willpower which spared no one – particularly not Alma, least of all himself. 

We see how Alma was at one level willingly compliant with Mahler’s demands. She needed to be needed, to be lover, mother and nurse, as well as mid-wife to the products of genius. And Alma [herself] was a bundle of contradictions, more unsure of herself in New York society than might have been expected, particularly when faced with independent-minded women . . .

In conclusion, I should draw attention to Horowitz’s use of language . . . Most impressive are his poetical accounts of Mahler’s music which profoundly acknowledge the composer’s genius, signaling that the author has no wish to diminish Mahler’s musical achievements. Descriptions of rehearsals for the Fourth Symphony in New York and the triumphant premiere of the Eighth in Munich stand out, capturing in just a few words the spirit of these great, if vastly different, works. 

The Marriage is a brave experiment, following wherever the imagination leads to fill gaps in historical knowledge and to test the validity of long held assumptions. 

From Bill McGlaughlin: 

For the first time in my experience, Alma Schindler/Mahler/Gropius/Werfel emerged not as a stick figure in the margins of the story, but central. Wayward, mercurial, fascinating, devoted to her husband and yet living (and concealing) her own life. As I read I became increasingly fond of her and sympathetic in a way that was new to me. . . . 

Going deeper and deeper, below his scholarship, Joe really imagines this lost world in a way we can enter it with him. This is his greatest achievement, I think. . . .

Along the way Joe lets us meet Mahler and his supporters and detractors, some of whom are portrayed sympathetically. Others — Henry Krehbiel, notably — are damned with their own words. (Has there ever been a bigger blowhard, stuffed fat with his own self-importance, smashing through the thickets of the music business?) . . . 

To balance Krehbiel, let me cite Mahler’s insight on the real worth of Richard Strauss:
“Somewhere beneath Strauss’ insane nonchalance dwells the voice of the Earth Spirit.”
Exactly so and very generous in appraising the work of a very irritating rival. . . .

The overall trajectory of Mahler’s life in these years could leave a reader despondent. Then, just when we’re about to abandon all hope, Joe gives us the story of the premiere of the Eighth Symphony in Munich, one of the greatest triumphs of Mahler’s life. This chapter is filled with love and music and children and leaves us with the will to go on.

Joe’s Mahler & Alma is a staggering achievement, enthralling, moving and inspiring. Reading its final pages, with Busoni appearing as an Angel of Death, one has the sense of having completed a profound journey, although one that is only a prelude of what is to come in the years beyond. Mahler is now heard around the world. And this book deepens our experience and satisfaction and love.

“Einsamkeit” = Bass Trombone + Piano + Dancers

David Taylor plays Schubert’s “Doppelganger”

My new “Einsamkeit” concoction, setting songs by Mahler and Schubert, premieres June 17 (7:30 pm) and 18 (3 pm) at the KnJ Theater near Union Square.

I’m collaborating with the singular bass trombonist David Taylor (“Killer!” – NY Times), Igal Perry (a choreographer who really knows music), and Igal’s Peridance Contemporary Dance Company (which is celebrating its fortieth anniversary season).

The centerpiece is Taylor’s rendition of Schubert’s “Doppelganger” – a version harrowing and virtuosic in equal measure, known and feared by all bass trombonists.

The other songs we adapt are:

Mahler: Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht

Schubert: Die Stadt

Schubert: Nebensonnen (which Taylor SINGS!)

Schubert: Der Leiermann (which Igal may dance)

David Taylor and I began playing Schubert songs together in my apartment decades ago. We had earlier played through the Beethoven cello sonatas (which David sight-read). One day I was struck with the realization that Taylor could do some real damage with late Schubert. “Doppelganger” felt especially lethal. He first performed it in Vienna at the Musikverein. It worked.

“Einsamkeit” begins with solo Bach, performed by cellist Nan-Cheng Chen, choreographed by Igal Perry.   

Tickets here.

(David Taylor and I next perform “Einsamkeit” (sans dancers) at the Brevard Music Festival on July 6. Taylor performs my “Mahlerei” for bass trombone and chamber ensemble at Brevard on July 5.)

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The Marriage — “An Alchemical Quest”

From Erik den Breejen’s review of my novel The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York, in the current New York Sun::

“Mr. Horowitz’s is an alchemical quest – to bring memories and accounts from dusty archives to life . . .

“When recreating a rehearsal of Mahler’s own Second Symphony, Mr. Horowitz’s rich use of detail compellingly evokes the feeling of the music but also the artist’s own unease in his new home: ‘a hushed and distant trumpet song, a tender lullaby over cascading harps. Memories – despoiled by these renegade Americans in a city of cement.’

“This in contrast to the vivid description of the triumphant debut performance in Munich of Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ . . .  The music created ‘a surging organism, a sentient community bound by a single primal impulse of apocalyptic sound and feeling.’

“While rehearsing the orchestra, Mahler instructs the players that the work is “a mosaic, not a blend. Shifting grains of color, always individual grains” – an astute description of Mahler’s music as well as The Marriage itself, with its myriad distinct strains coalescing into a convincing whole.”

Den Breejen also writes:

“One of the central problems facing contemporary orchestras is how to appeal to a generation raised on 15-second videos. A ‘dumbing down’ of programming is not what Mr. Horowitz sees as the solution. ‘’Orchestras have moved in a different direction than museums,’ he says. ‘The thing that most dismays me is that museums are so far ahead of orchestras. They have scholars on staff, they embrace scholarship, they curate the past, which means they have a knowledgeable understanding of previous achievement, and in particular, American achievement. No orchestra even aspires to do that. . . . ‘

“Amid this weekend’s sold-out performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony led by the New York Philharmonic’s future music director, Gustavo Dudamel — who inspired the character Rodrigo on the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle — I asked Mr. Horowitz if he thought the problem of the ‘celebrity conductor’ that he outlined in Understanding Toscanini persisted to this day.

“He offered diplomacy, while adding, ‘The fact that a conductor, rather than a composer, should be the iconic musician, is, I think, a problem that begins with Toscanini and exists to this day.’’

Boulder’s 36th (!) Mahlerfest — A Communal Labor of Love

The author riding the carousel at Nederland (alt. 8,000 feet), 30 minutes from Boulder.

Thirty-six years ago, the conductor Robert Olson, a faculty member at Boulder’s University of Colorado, created Colorado Mahlerfest for hungry Mahlerites. In 1987, performances of Mahler symphonies were far less common, far less pervasive than today. The first Mahlerfest comprised the First Symphony, an early movement for piano quartet, and a set of songs.

Mahlerfest XXXVI, which concluded last Sunday afternoon, included three orchestral concerts, two chamber music concerts, and a film. As the author The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York, I took part in an all-day symposium. The entire festival experience was impressive.

Mahler’s is not living-room music. He composed big pieces for a community of listeners. It was the communal aspect of Boulder’s Mahlerfest that surprised me most.. 

The centerpiece of the festival was a performance of the Resurrection Symphony, which lasts ninety minutes and requires a large orchestra, offstage brass and percussion, two vocal soloists, and a big chorus. The audience at Macky Hall, on the University of Colorado campus, numbered about a thousand. Completed in 1922, the hall is picturesque, with tall cathedral windows. The rapt audience was remarkably inter-generational – something not to be found in New York City concert halls these days, and crucial to the ambience of shared experience.

As unusual is that the orchestra of 100-plus players felt part of it all. They arrived to play Mahler from all over the United States. Only the principal players were paid. The others came as a labor of love. 

The conductor was Kenneth Woods, in charge since Olson’s departure in 2015. A gifted speaker and thinker, he is a pervasive presence. He is not addressed as “maestro” – the presiding maestro being Gustav Mahler.

Woods’ performance of Mahler 2 left no doubt that he is a major Mahler interpreter. I have heard cleaner performance of this work, but never one more convincing. The symphony suffered a long and tortuous gestation lasting some six years. The first movement is a funeral march, the second a Landler of sorts, the third a kaleidoscopic scherzo. After that, the piece goes its own way, with agonized words by Klopstock and Mahler, an opening of graves, a march of the dead, and a final paean of transcendence. 

This blazing sequence risks shattering under pressure into disconnected shards of brilliance. The opening march movement alone, some twenty minutes long, combines grief and fury with soaring intimations of serenity. Mahler asks that the fundamental speed change more than two dozen times. Woods’ reading here embraced an exceptional range of mood and tempo. But a mighty Ur-pulse was sustained. The movement ends with a wasted tread, then a torrential scalar descent, then two pizzicato chords. Reading a sharply accented staccato triplet, Woods’ violas (an exceptional group) more than honored the score; they enacted the dirge’s culminating fatigue. The play of tempo in these closing measures was so keenly gauged that the silences told loudly and precisely. And so it was in the subsequent movements, with their many critical pauses; the trajectory remained organic. Midway through the pivotal mezzo-soprano solo – right at “the loving God will grant me light” — the Boulder sun emerged, streaming through the high cathedral windows. An uncanny moment. 

Woods was also responsible for the artistic heft of the festival’s five packed days. The Resurrection Symphony was preceded by an ambitious symphonic work by Thea Musgrave: Phoenix Rising (1997). A Mahler “Liederaband,” recreating Mahler’s Vienna concert of January 29, 1905, comprised sixteen songs with orchestra: Kindertotenlieder, Ruckert-Lieder, and selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. A chamber orchestra program comprised the American premiere of Hans Gal’s Fourth Symphony (1974) and act one of Wagner’s Die Walkure (with reduced forces). Two chamber music concerts included a terrific rendition of Korngold’s String Sextet (Op. 10), Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Cello and Piano (a transcription of his viola suite), and shorter works by Max Reger, Erwin Schulhoff, Egon Wellesz, Olivier Messiaen, and Luciano Berio. 

Next May, Mahlerfest XXXVII will explore the relationship between Mahler and Richard Strauss. The orchestral fare will include Mahler’s Fourth and Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. I’ll be there. 

The 2023 Mahlerfest Symposium may be accessed here. My presentation begins one hour and 48 minutes into the link and includes commentary by Thomas Hampson. I deal with (1) Mahler’s New York performances and what they sounded like, and (2) why Henry Krehbiel regarded Mahler’s New York Philharmonic tenure a “failure” (and how I turn their relationship into historical fiction).

“Re-Imagining Mahler” — A Colorado Mahlerfest Live-Stream this Saturday

“Re-Imagining Mahler – and Why His Brief New York Philharmonic Tenure Was Truly a ‘Failure’” is the topic of my talk at this Saturday’s Colorado Mahlerfest Symposium in Boulder. I’ll also address creative fiction as a vital tool for the cultural historian.

I’ll be joined (from Vienna) by Thomas Hampson – who has recorded another excerpt from my new novel The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York (which among other things explains the nature of Mahler’s “failure”). 

The Symposium will be live-streamed here.

You can see the day’s line-up of talks here (I’m 10:15 to 11:45 am Mountain Time).

You can listen to Tom read the beginning of my chapter one — the Mahlers being greeted by Heinrich Conried, the Metropolitan Opera’s bumbling manager — here:

Thomas Hampson Reads from “The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York”

Thomas Hampson, a singer long identified with the songs of Gustav Mahler, has kindly recorded a couple of excerpts from my new novel The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York – a book he calls “revelatory.”

Here’s Tom reading my account of Gustav and Alma interacting in Gustav’s dressing room, following a rehearsal of Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera:

If you’re curious to know how my book begins, you can see me reading the opening chapter – in which Heinrich Conried, the bumbling director of the beleaguered Metropolitan Opera, greets the famous couple from Vienna.

I next discuss The Marriage at the Colorado Mahlerfest symposium on May 20 in Boulder. 

My Einsamkeit, adapting songs by Mahler and Schubert for bass trombone and piano, will be performed with choreopraphy by Igal Perry at New York’s Peridance Center on June 17 and 18.

My Mahlerei, a bass trombone concerto adapting the scherzo from Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, will be performed by David Taylor at the Brevard Music Festival on July 5. 

Advance Praise for The Marriage:

Horowitz is a master of what I would call “passionate scholarship.” He has a stake in what he writes. There is a lot of very sensitive skin in his game. As a literary writer he is at heart the free-spirited scholar he has been for decades; his prose frames in precise words the psychological ambiguities of personalities no less than the nu- ances of musical compositions or performances. His deep histor- ical knowledge blends with his narrative imagination to bring to life the sounds, the smells, the physical textures, the very air his characters breathed: Gustav and Alma Mahler are, at the same time, accurate historical portraits and haunting literary presences. 

Antonio Muñoz Molina, winner of the Jerusalem Prize 

❦

Despite his emotions having so often been on show, there has al- ways been something enigmatic and unknowable about Gustav Mahler. But where biographers and other musicologists have struggled, Joseph Horowitz succeeds brilliantly in revealing the inner Mahler in this powerful and moving novel. It is a triumph of historical imagination. 

Richard Aldous, author of Tunes of Glory: The Life of Malcolm Sargent; Eugene Meyer Professor of History and Culture, Bard College 

❦

If we want to get closer to the “truth” of Mahler and his music, if we hope to improve our understanding of the person and his crea- tions, we need to acknowledge the role our imagination must play in the learning process. In the case of Mahler, the essential facts have long been known. What we need now are fresh attempts to conceive what further truths they might contain. Joseph Horow- itz’s brilliant novel reveals much to us about who Mahler was, what he accomplished, and how he related to his world. Readers will be as eager to study it as they would any biography, and they can expect to learn as much. 

Charles Youmans, author of Mahler and Strauss: In Dialogue (2016); editor of Mahler in Context (2021); Professor of Musicology, Penn State University 

❦

Joe Horowitz’s The Marriage portrays Mahler with more power and poignancy than anyone else ever has. Set in a spider web of New York City wealth, power, and intrigue, the writing is so pro- foundly personal, so searingly intimate, that it is sometimes painful to read – to get that close to Mahler and his wife Alma – “the most beautiful woman in Vienna.” I found myself unable to resist reading passages several times. This is a book for people who love Mahler and long to know him intimately (and there are millions) – a truer, more human Mahler than we have ever before encountered. Alma is also fabulously drawn, with all her love and antipathy towards her husband. 

JoAnn Falletta, Music Director, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra 

❦

Persuasive and fair. It is refreshing to see this chapter of Gustav Mahler’s biography from an American perspective, written by someone not automatically biased in favor of Europe. 

Karol Berger, author of Beyond Reason: Wagner contra Nietzsche; Osgood Hooker Professor in Fine Arts, Stanford University 

Mahler vs. Anton Seidl — “All the Things that Mahler Wasn’t”

 

Yesterday – the publication date for my novel The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York – I had an enthralling video exchange with Morten Solvik of the Mahler Foundation in Vienna. You can see it here.

Some highlights:

3:24 – “You can’t understand the story of Mahler in New York without first understanding what went on there before he arrived – something Mahler himself never understood. And this was noted and resented. . .  When Henry Krehbiel called Mahler’s American career a ‘failure,’ this was a comprehensible verdict.”  Mahler’s New York predecessor Anton Seidl – who makes Krehbiel’s verdict comprehensible – “was all the things that Mahler wasn’t”: an American citizen who summered in the Catskills, who befriended the American composer, who assumed a mantle of cultural leadership.  

6:18 – Henry-Louis de La Grange, Mahler’s most prominent, most copious biographer, came to graciously understand Seidl’s significance  — “I took him aside and told him about Seidl. But he could never overcome his antipathy to Henry Krehbiel.” The New York music critics, generally, were far more sagacious than de La Grange allowed. “Their reviews of Mahler the conductor retain credibility.”

9:25 – Re: historical fiction: my first experiment was in my young readers’ book Dvorak in America (2003). “I had acquired a very intimate relationship with Seidl” via the un-catalogued archives at Columbia University and the Brooklyn Historical Society , handling his letters, his memorabilia, even speeches written in pencil. “It was a bewitching experience.” Evoking Seidl conversing with Dvorak at Fleischmann’s Cafe, “I actually knew what he would say.” I discovered that “I could learn things writing historical fiction, that it’s a very special tool for the cultural historian. . . . In some ways The Marriage is more like ‘creative non-fiction.’ It hews closely to events that actually occurred.”

10:07 – “My fundamental sense of Mahler is of someone who lives inside his head. There’s nothing wrong with that if you’re a composer – but it’s not so great if you’re the music director of an orchestra.” Dvorak, in comparison, at all times absorbed his environment; it was “inevitable that he would write a New World symphony – and inconceivable that Mahler would do so. . . . He never researched American music. it was obvious that he hadn’t done his homework.”

18:00 – Mahler at the Met: his innovations – importing Alfred Roller’s Fidelio production, treating Mozart as ensemble opera – were “striking, new, and successful – but ephemeral.” “They didn’t take.”

25:00 – The Mahler sonority: “everything in your face, a flat perspective like a Klimt canvas, a new conception of symphonic sound.”

30:00 – “People who write about Mahler in New York only see what happened just before he came – a period of institutional decline. . . . This is so poorly done.” Also: virtually unnoticed is that Mahler never complained at about his orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera – “and that was the New York orchestra that most mattered, not the New York Philharmonic.” Also unnoticed: New York City was regularly visited by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arthur Nikisch. “That’s a really high standard.” A crucial factor was Henry Higginson, “a mind-boggling figure” who invented, owned, and operated the Boston Symphony. “You spend some time with Higginson – it’s just humbling. . . . It’s something that’s unheard of today – a person of this stature running an orchestra.” Compared to the New York Philharmonic’s Mary Sheldon – “night and day.” And Seidl, too, had a Higginson. This was Laura Langford, Brooklyn’s leading impresario. “Something Mahler never had.”

42:00 – Henry Krehbiel – “the elephant in the room,” “the greatest figure in the history of American musical journalism.” “You can’t know Mahler in New York without knowing Henry Krehbiel – and Mahler’s biographers don’t know Henry Krehbiel.”

49:00 – “Alma [Mahler] is someone who doesn’t really know who she is or what she wants.” In a new environment, unlike her husband [in his hotel room], she’s “exploratory.” She reveals herself “in juxtaposition with women more professionally accomplished than herself . . . when situated in a room with Olive Fremstad or Natalie Curtis.”

1:05 – Snapshots: Mahler vs. Toscanini; Mahler and Ives

Anton Seidl is the core topic of my book “Wagner Nights: An American History” (1995).

My thanks to Morten Solvik, Thomas Hampson, and the Mahler Foundation. Stay tuned for Thomas Hampson reading from “The Marriage.”

Mahler vs. Toscanini — and this Saturday’s “Mahler Hour” on Zoom

“How would you compare Mahler and Toscanini in New York?” asked Kenneth Wood, Artistic Director of Boulder’s Colorado MahlerFest, in a zoom conversation a few days ago about my new novel: The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York (the official pub date is this Saturday).

You can see and hear my answer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCgIWXRoqk

You can also hear me in conversation with Morten Solvik of the Mahler Foundation on “The Mahler Hour” this coming Saturday at 10 am ET by tuning in here: https://www.youtube.com/c/MahlerFoundation 

If you want to know what I said about Mahler and Toscanini without bothering with the link, I said this:

Mahler was displaced at the Metropolitan Opera by “an Italian juggernaut.” “Mahler didn’t care to investigate the New York musical situation he encountered in 1907. This got him into a lot of trouble and signifies, I would say, his most striking personal trait – that he lived inside his head. And that’s fine if you’re a composer. It’s not so great if you’re a music director.” 

As for Toscanini – “Unlike Mahler, you couldn’t oppose him. If Mahler was opposed he’d get upset. If Toscanini was opposed, he would just bulldoze over every adversary. And when he decided that he was going to appropriate the Wagner repertoire, Mahler fought a completely futile rearguard action before realizing that he was outgunned. Being rebuffed at the Met, he would up conducting the New York Philharmonic. . . Imagine these dueling personalities in New York, Mahler and Toscanini – that itself could be a book, but it’s never been written.”

Kenneth Woods: “Maybe that’s your own next book.’

JH: “I think I shot my wad in Understanding Toscanini in 1987. Whenever I return to that topic, there are still people around who get very upset,”

When asked to summarize my new novel (5:30), I reply: “It was a very taxing moment for this very odd couple. It’s an interesting context in which to observe Mahler and his wife – as newcomers.”

KW: “Who thrived more?”

JH: “That’s a mind-boggling question.” For Mahler (as for Toscanini, after World War I), New York signified among other things an opportunity to conduct symphonies – something he couldn’t much do in Europe. As for Alma: “Things are here even more complicated. She’s much harder to read than her husband because she’s someone in a state of internal confusion about who she is and what she wants. Did New York clarify this for her? I don’t think so. I would say this: at least for me, her most revealing moments are when she finds herself in the presence of a woman more professionaly accomplished than herself. You know, you learn things when you write historical fiction.” In my book, in the presence of the soprano Olive Fremstad, and of the fledgling ethnomusicologist Natalie Curtis, Alma “realizes what she wasn’t.” 

KW (at 10:17): “In writing a historical novel, where are the borders between fact and fiction?”

I here distinguished between “historical fiction” and “creative non-fiction.” I add: “My book is two things – it’s a novel and it’s also the first book-length treatment of the Mahlers in America – a topic that’s been murdered because everybody who writes about it knows next to nothing about New York.” Mahler’s New York “was a world music capital” in which Anton Seidl and Antonin Dvorak, dominant in the 1880s and 1890s, cast long shadows. And there was Mahler’s nemesis, the critic Henry Krehbiel, who quite accurately declared Mahler’s New York tenure “a failure.” An initial crisis (13:35): When, as the Philharmonic program annotator,  Krehbiel asked permission to print Mahler’s program for his First Symphony, he wound up writing a program note disclosing that Mahler forbade program notes. “Their relationship deteriorated after that.”

KW (at 15:20): Did the ‘factionalized” music critics in Vienna influence Mahler’s standoffish behavior towards Krehbiel and other New York critics?

JH: “American music criticism is a species unto itself – especially in this period, when it’s at its apex.” Krehbiel and others filed their reviews immediately — they appeared the next morning. This practice was unknown abroad. Also: “As Mahler may or may not have noticed, there was no anti-Semitism in the New York musical press.” 

To close on a note of controversy (18:40), I opine that those Viennese critics who called Mahler’s music, and even his interpretations, “Jewish” were “not necessarily anti-Semitic.” I here reference Arthur Farwell’s remarkable blow-by-blow review of Mahler’s Mahleresque reading of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony with the Philharmonic, in the Musical America — a crucial text for my treatment of Mahler in performance in The Marriage..

–I speak at the Boulder’s Colorado MahlerFest symposium on May 20.

–My “Mahlerei” for bass trombone and chamber ensemble will be performed at the Brevard Music Festival on July 5 (with sui generis soloist David Taylor).

–My “Einsamkeit,” re-imagining songs by Maher and Schubert (also with David Taylor), will be performed at New York City’s Peridance Center on June 17 and 18, with choreography by Igal Perry.