On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), one of the most important composers of the 20th century, events are being held throughout the world in honour of his memory. Amongst these events are some taking place close to Slovenia’s borders. We have therefore established connection with the festival MAHLER Contemporary (9-18 July 2010) in Klagenfurt and The Gustav Mahler Music Weeks in Dobbiaco/Toblach.
Further events are planned for 2011, when we will pay musical tribute to the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death.
Gustav Mahler is connected with Ljubljana and with the Slovene people in a very special way. When he arrived in Ljubljana in 1881 he was 21 years old. Certain sources state that he was called to Ljubljana professionally, while others (more credibly) claim that he was persuaded to come to Ljubljana by his friend Anton Krisper, the son of a wealthy Ljubljana family of traders, with whom he also resided during his stay.
The details of Mahler’s arrival and stay in Ljubljana are not known due to a fire in the Estate Theatre (Stanovsko gledališče) that destroyed the theatre’s archive. However, the composer himself described his situation at the time: “I accepted the offer like a drowning man who sees about himself only straw, for which he greedily reaches in order to save his own existence.”
In the 1881/82 season, Gustav Mahler, who had recently completed his studies of piano, harmony and composition at the Vienna Conservatory, worked as a conductor at the Provincial Theatre (Deželno gledališče). The response that he and his work enjoyed, which we can gather today from the modest music reports of the Ljubljana press of the time, were extremely positive. The reporters wrote that Mahler conducted with “a great deal of warmth and charm”. They emphasised that he was an excellent young artist who “is a thoroughly schooled musician and approaches the weight of his profession with all seriousness”.
Mahler was therefore invited to collaborate with the Philharmonic Society. He appeared as a pianist at a concert in March 1882, performing Mendelssohn’s Capriccio brilliant in B Minor (with string quartet), Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat Major and Schumann’s Waldszenen (Forest Scenes). At a charity event in the theatre a few weeks later Mahler was presented with an enormous laurel wreath, and the newspapers reported that “the young superbly schooled musician, who takes his task seriously, has for the entire season displayed a great deal of effort and care and is entirely deserving of this tribute.”
Ljubljana was just one of the ports of call on Mahler’s artistic path, which first led him to Olomouc and then to Kassel, where he accepted a conducting position in the autumn of 1883. In 1886, he left to become the second conductor at the New Municipal Theatre in Leipzig, and two years later he became the director of the Royal Opera in Budapest. His restless spirit then conveyed him to Hamburg in 1891, where he remained until 1897, the year that he became the director of the Vienna State Opera. During this time, he wrote a series of important works at his summer residence in the village of Maiernigg (Majrobnik in Slovene) on the shores of Lake Wörthersee (Vrbsko jezero), thus in the Slovene ethnic territory. In 1907, he left Vienna for New York. He returned to Europe in the summer, where he remained until his death in Vienna on 18 May 1911, in the midst of composing his Tenth Symphony.
Although Mahler’s work in Ljubljana was limited to one season, the city continued to remember him later as the newspapers followed his career and the Philharmonic Society programmed his work in its concerts. When he died, the newspapers in Ljubljana published certain memoirs concerning the composer and the period when he had lived in the city.
With a statue by Bojan Kunaver in the halls of the Slovenian Philharmonic, and with the sound of the symphonies, we will honour two great anniversaries: 150 years since the birth and 100 years since the death of “our” Gustav Mahler.
The programme includs:
Symphony No. 9 (3 and 4 March 2010, conductor: Emmanuel Villaume)
Symphony No. 2 (8 July 2010, conductor: Emmanuel Villaume, soloists TBA)
Symphony No. 5 (21 and 22 October 2010, conductor: Emmanuel Villaume)
Symphony No. 6 (28 and 29 October 2010, conductor: Emmanuel Villaume)
