Gustav Mahler— A Change of Style

Composer Gustav Mahler famously found inspiration from a collection of German folk poetry known as Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn). He created songs from them and incorporated those songs into his sprawling symphonies. In 1901, Mahler found additional inspiration in the work of Friedrich Rückert, a poet and translator who embraced the great poetic forms of Persia and India (among many others), and whose work had been set to music by Schubert, the Schumanns, and Brahms. This discovery ultimately paved the way for Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. In this talk, Aaron Cohen explores the compositional ideas Mahler incorporated into his music and shares excerpts from the upcoming season of his podcast “Embrace Everything—The World of Gustav Mahler.” These newly produced excerpts include commentary from musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as conductors, music scholars, and actors voicing the words of Mahler and his contemporaries.