Mahler, the Unrequited Narcissist

Mahler: Symphony no. 1, original 1889 version

Asuka Kakitani: The Shifting Sky

Gustav Mahler just wanted to be loved, and he knew his first big work in 1889 was going to bring adoration. It didn’t. Critics called it so much noise. Audiences shunned him. So the neurotic Mahler revised it and renamed it his Symphony no. 1, Titan. If audiences were cold to the transparency of the music, he would pile on more instruments, more bombast. If they didn’t like the sublime Blumbine movement, he’d cut it and make the symphony bigger – like someone who talks louder and more aggressively when they feel they are not being heard. Yet there was still no love for what Mahler came to call his “symphony of sorrows.”Acclaim wouldn’t come until he was long dead. When you hear the original version, only recently recreated and last performed in 2017, it will sound familiar…