Happy Birthday, Gustav Mahler!

I'll drink to that...

The Tragic 6th Symphony. The three giant hammer blows in the fourth movement are worth the price of admission alone.

Chicago/Solti.

Few things are more beautiful than the finale of Mahler's 2nd, "the Resurrection."

Leonard Slatkin leading The Saint Louis Orchestra & Chorus, with Maureen Forrester and DL fav KATHLEEN BATTLE.

I'll have a piece.

I could listen to Mahler's 9th on endless repeat. Happy birthday, Gustav!

R5 when I am feeling sad or if life doesn't work out, I play Mahler's 9th. There is something so therapeutic about it.

Das Lied von der Erde is probably his best composition.

St. Anthony’s Sermon to the Fish from Des Knaben Wunderhorn always makes me smile.

The Piano Quartet

[quote] The Tragic 6th Symphony. The three giant hammer blows in the fourth movement are worth the price of admission alone.

R2 The French Horn player didn’t realize that the “hammer blows of fate” in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony referred to him until the percussionist with the long arms missed the box.

For the life of me I can’t understand how people like (or love!) the 6th and the 9th.

And one for Mahler!

Happy Birthday, Ringo Starr! Exactly 80 years younger than Gustav.

Now, back to Mahler.

I recognize OP’s picture from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It’s one of the early exercises where you copy an image upside down to focus on what your eye is actually seeing rather than drawing what you think you see. I’ve drawn those intertwined fingers several times!

R11 why do you not like them?

I've listened to quite a bit of Mahler but he isn't a favorite composer of mine. Used to listen to a lot of symphony broadcasts on the radio, at one time, when our classical station had Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, and St. Louis.

I'm a big fan of the 9th, R11. Why? Because it speaks to me. Mahler wrote it while facing terminal illness, and the ending shows the ultimate acceptance of the fate of all living things. I was in high school when I listened to it for the first time, but I came back to Mahler and the 9th in college, That was in the early 80s when the AIDS epidemic was building, and paranoia and panic had begun to set in. I was just coming out, and seeing it as an almost-certain death penalty. Mahler's 9th helped me to face the realities around me. I got through that time, not unscathed but uninfected. Fifteen years later I was diagnosed with lymphoma, and I saw the end approaching once more. I beat the odds, and it's been another twenty years. I keep going back to that symphony because it speaks to me about all the joys and heartbreaks of life, and brings back people and times that shouldn't be forgotten. And, at the end of the music, I find myself agreeing more and more with Mahler: life is hard and sometimes cruel, but it is Life. And when death comes, all you can do is resign yourself and hope for there to be something more.

R17 well said