A great 4-part series on the symphonies of Gustav Mahler.

[usonian]

I was listening to the Mahler 7th on internet radio...

And remembered a fantastic series on the Mahler symphonies that I had heard on WDAV.

I found the series online and most highly recommended it.

The first episode (spoiler) is about Leonard Bernstein and how he put the spotlight on these great works. He really channeled composers. I remember his Young People's Concerts.

The other episodes cover inspirations for some of his other symphonies.

He had an enormous range of expression, from the gentle and pastoral to the comic to tragic to the spiritual to the triumphant.

The audio of all of them is available here;

https://exchange.prx.org/series/39638-embrace-everything-the-world-of-gustav-mahler

Embrace Everything - The World of Gustav Mahler
Series produced by Aaron Cohen

The Embrace Everything series is an exploration and celebration of the music of Gustav Mahler. Throughout his life Mahler insisted that music had to, literally, embrace everything. This makes his compositions unusually rich in what they offer both audience and musicians. It’s often delightfully quirky one moment and then deeply tragic the next. Mahler did not shy away from introducing the most low-brow, commonplace musical tune alongside the most radiantly sublime words in all of spiritual literature. Gustav Mahler meant what he said: music has to embrace everything.

Each program explores a different Mahler symphony. The series will include more than 100 interviews with leading conductors, music scholars, and orchestral musicians—all of whom have extensive first-hand experience with the music, offering an abundance of insights into just what makes Mahler’s music so unique. Additionally, comments from Mahler and his contemporaries will be read by actors throughout the programs. Each episode will explore how Mahler drew not just from the world of music but from the other arts, from the world of nature, and from life itself. Anything that attracted Mahler’s attention was liable to find its way into the music. How did he do this? That’s something each episode will investigate.

Interviews thus far include members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Complete details can be found at https://www.theworldofgustavmahler.org