Donald's Blog
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This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison,
Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the
winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were
AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there. |
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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever,
and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything
that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool
of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the
site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc.
to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.
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July 31, 2010Mahler's AnniversariesThis year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Gustav Mahler, and next year will be the 100th anniversary of his death. On 31 December 1909 he conducted Beethoven's violin concerto, with violinist Maud Powell. She later wrote the following:
I worship the memory of Gustav Mahler, the man and the musician. I sensed his genius most keenly perhaps in the beautiful intimacy that exists between conductor and soloist in interpreting a master work like the Beethoven Violin Concerto. The sensitiveness, the inspirational vision, the forgetfulness of self in the searching appreciation of the composer’s intent revealed a musical soul of ineffable sweetness coupled with the force we call genius. As a man he did not belong to our hurly-burly, materialistic age; he was a pathetic figure, sick, shy, often irritable, unworldly to the point of making enemies on all sides, completely in earnest, simple in taste and habits, and, like all sensitive souls, overjoyed when perchance he found some one who understood him. Certainly he was not understood in New York, and it is an ineffaceable blot on our musical history that the critical harassing he suffered at our hands undoubtedly hastened his death.
I sincerely hope it may be my privilege to be present at the production of the Eighth Symphony on April 9th.
Posted to the Mahler-list in July 2010 by Chuck Amenta, this was originally published by The Society of the Friends of Music in Gustav Mahler – The composer, the Conductor and the Man, New York, 1916; and reprinted in Zoltan Roman’s Gustav Mahler’s American Years 1907–1911, Pendragon Press, Stuyvesant NY, 1989. On April 9 1916 Leopold Stokowski conducted Mahler's 8th in New York City with the Philadelphia Orchestra.