{"id":2558,"date":"2023-04-26T00:17:44","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T04:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2558"},"modified":"2023-04-26T18:21:48","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T22:21:48","slug":"mahler-vs-toscanini-and-this-saturdays-mahler-hour-on-zoom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2023\/04\/mahler-vs-toscanini-and-this-saturdays-mahler-hour-on-zoom.html","title":{"rendered":"Mahler vs. Toscanini — and this Saturday’s “Mahler Hour” on Zoom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cHow would you compare Mahler and Toscanini in New York?\u201d asked Kenneth Woods, Artistic Director of Boulder\u2019s Colorado MahlerFest,<\/a> in a zoom conversation a few days ago about my new novel:\u00a0The<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Marriage: The Mahlers in New York<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>(the official pub date is this Saturday).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can see and hear my answer here: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wXCgIWXRoqk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can also hear me in conversation with Morten Solvik of the Mahler Foundation on \u201cThe Mahler Hour\u201d this coming Saturday at 10 am ET<\/strong> by tuning in here: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/MahlerFoundation<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to know what I said about Mahler and Toscanini without bothering with the link, I said this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahler was displaced at the Metropolitan Opera by \u201can Italian juggernaut.\u201d \u201cMahler didn\u2019t 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 \u2013 that he lived inside his head. And that\u2019s fine if you\u2019re a composer. It\u2019s not so great if you\u2019re a music director.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for Toscanini \u2013 \u201cUnlike Mahler, you couldn\u2019t oppose him. If Mahler was opposed he\u2019d 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 \u2013 that itself could be a book, but it\u2019s never been written.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenneth Woods: \u201cMaybe that\u2019s your own next book.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JH: \u201cI think I shot my wad in Understanding Toscanini<\/a><\/em><\/strong> in 1987. Whenever I return to that topic, there are still people around who get very upset,\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked to summarize my new novel (5:30), I reply: \u201cIt was a very taxing moment for this very odd couple. It\u2019s an interesting context in which to observe Mahler and his wife \u2013 as newcomers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KW: \u201cWho thrived more?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JH: \u201cThat\u2019s a mind-boggling question.\u201d For Mahler (as for Toscanini, after World War I), New York signified among other things an opportunity to conduct symphonies \u2013 something he couldn\u2019t much do in Europe. As for Alma: \u201cThings are here even more complicated. She\u2019s much harder to read than her husband because she\u2019s someone in a state of internal confusion about who she is and what she wants. Did New York clarify this for her? I don\u2019t 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.\u201d In my book, in the presence of the soprano Olive Fremstad, and of the fledgling ethnomusicologist Natalie Curtis, Alma \u201crealizes what she wasn\u2019t.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

KW (at 10:17): \u201cIn writing a historical novel, where are the borders between fact and fiction?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I here distinguished between \u201chistorical fiction\u201d and \u201ccreative non-fiction.\u201d I add: \u201cMy book is two things \u2013 it\u2019s a novel and it\u2019s also the first book-length treatment of the Mahlers in America \u2013 a topic that\u2019s been murdered because everybody who writes about it knows next to nothing about New York<\/strong>.\u201d Mahler\u2019s New York \u201cwas a world music capital\u201d in which Anton Seidl and Antonin Dvorak, dominant in the 1880s and 1890s, cast long shadows. And there was Mahler\u2019s nemesis, the critic Henry Krehbiel, who quite accurately declared Mahler\u2019s New York tenure \u201ca failure.\u201d An initial crisis (13:35): When, as the Philharmonic program annotator,  Krehbiel asked permission to print Mahler\u2019s program for his First Symphony, he wound up writing a program note disclosing that Mahler forbade program notes. \u201cTheir relationship deteriorated after that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KW (at 15:20): Did the \u2018factionalized\u201d music critics in Vienna influence Mahler\u2019s standoffish behavior towards Krehbiel and other New York critics?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JH: \u201cAmerican music criticism is a species unto itself \u2013 especially in this period, when it\u2019s at its apex.\u201d Krehbiel and others filed their reviews immediately — they appeared the next morning. This practice was unknown abroad. Also: \u201cAs Mahler may or may not have noticed, there was no anti-Semitism in the New York musical press.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To close on a note of controversy (18:40), I opine that those Viennese critics who called Mahler\u2019s music, and even his interpretations, \u201cJewish\u201d were \u201cnot necessarily anti-Semitic.\u201d I here reference Arthur Farwell\u2019s remarkable blow-by-blow review of Mahler\u2019s Mahleresque reading of Schubert\u2019s Ninth Symphony with the Philharmonic, in the Musical America — <\/em>a crucial text for my treatment of Mahler in performance in The Marriage..<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

–I speak at the Boulder’s Colorado MahlerFest symposium<\/a> on May 20.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

–My \u201cMahlerei\u201d for bass trombone and chamber ensemble will be performed at the Brevard Music Festival on July 5 (with sui generis soloist David Taylor).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

–My \u201cEinsamkeit,\u201d re-imagining songs by Maher and Schubert (also with David Taylor), will be performed at New York City\u2019s Peridance Center on June 17 and 18, with choreography by Igal Perry.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHow would you compare Mahler and Toscanini in New York?\u201d asked Kenneth Woods, Artistic Director of Boulder\u2019s Colorado MahlerFest, in a zoom conversation a few days ago about my new novel:\u00a0The\u00a0Marriage: The Mahlers in New York\u00a0(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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Fg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2558"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2580,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions\/2580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}