Anybody here listen to Mahler?

@tuberist ,

I, too, had a hard time with Mahler in the beginning.

My 2 cents:

Start with the First Symphony-Way too many good recordings, so you have no problem finding a good one.

For vocal, I found Das Lied von de Erde, to be an easy listen- and it contains music from the 1st symphony, so you get to hear it in a different setting.

If you are still interested, move onto his other symphonic and vocal works.

Late Mahler is pretty strong stuff (like the Brahms Requiem-IMHO- Well, not that bad😉),

I found the 6th symphony by accident (Horenstein in Stockholm Live, if I recall). It is another ’easy’ listen.

B

I, too, didn’t appreciate Mahler right away; it took time. Now, he’s one of my favorite composers. No recording beats a live Mahler performance, but I own 50-60 CD recordings of his symphonies, and his work really benefits from a good audio system.

Probably the most-loved is Mahler’s 2nd, the "Resurrection" symphony. After Beethoven’s 9th and 5th, Mahler’s 2nd is arguably the greatest symphony, thrilling, profound and soul-stirring. There are many good versions; I’d highly recommend Ivan Fischer conducting the Budapest Festival Orchestra on a Channel Classics SACD --a perfectly-judged performance in stellar sound. Leopold Stokowski’s live recording of the Resurrection with the London Symphony Orchestra is in acceptable sound, but the performance will rock your world.

Bernstein cycle and Tilson Thomas on Blue Coast.

YES! For the past 40+ years!  IMO Mahler is the greatest  symphonic composer!!

As someone wrote, with each of Zander’s recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra (on Telarc) there was included a separate disk with lengthy explanations of history, context, his conducting choices, examples of other conductors’ choices, examples, etc. For his Mahler 2 on Linn there was a download. I personally gained a good deal of insight from listening to these.

It seems that these "Discussion Disk" audios are now freely available for Mahler’s Symphonies 1,2,3,5,6,and 9. (4 is not there. He did not record 7 or 8.) They are on the page given and on succeeding ones mixed with other audios.

https://www.benjaminzander.org/audio/