Concerts and Events

The Maestro and Mahler Event

Saturday the 9th November 2024 at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, 9 Margaret Street, Birmingham, B3 3BS.

This event is dedicated to the memory of Derek Jones

You’ve seen the film now explore the story behind it!

Who are the greatest musical figures of the 20th century? In the pantheon some would put the Beatles who broke the mould of modern popular music and blues in particular. In the classical world some would put Schoenberg who set off in a new direction, invented a new type of music and challenged audiences to think differently.

However there are two other contenders - Gustav Mahler and Leonard Bernstein who in their separate ways achieved some really remarkable things.

On 9th November the Gustav Mahler Society in the North and Midlands (GMS N&M) will be running a study day which will explore the links between two of the greatest musicians of the 20 th century - Gustav Mahler and Leonard Bernstein. The day will explore through film, readings talks and guided discussion, the lives and works of these outstanding conductors and composers.

With a leading authority, Dr Kevin Carey, the study day will be run at the Birmingham and Midlands Institute (Dickens Room) Margaret Street, Birmingham on 9 th November starting at 11.00. Morning and afternoon refreshments will be provided.

Itinerary:

11.00 Tea/coffee

11.30 Opening remarks
Brief biography – “Who is Leonard Bernstein?”

12.00 Mahler and the Maestro video. (This is presented with the kind permission of www.theworldofgustavmahler.org)

12.30 A reading of Bernstein’s article from High Fidelity Magazine, 1967. “Mahler: his time has come”.

1.00 Lunch break (Please note, lunch is not included in the ticket price.)

2.00 Presentation by Dr Kevin Carey - Mahler Recordings 1924-70: Where Does Bernstein Fit?

3.15 Tea and coffee plus Q&A session

4.00 (Approx.) Concluding remarks.
Short video - Bernstein conducts the end of Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony in Ely Cathedral (as recreated in the film “Maestro”)

Tickets are £25 each from Eventbrite. Alternatively they can be purchased via the GMS website, or on the door (cash or cheque only) subject to availability.

Please pay by bank transfer to:

Gustav Mahler Society UK
(Cooperative Bank, Skelmersdale)
A/c: 65078954       
Sort: 08 92 99
Ref: MAESTRO your surname and initial

Enquiries: Penny Young. penelopeyoung@btinternet.com

Past Events 2024

Trip to Berlin!

Our group of eight GMS UK members are now home from Berlin after an unforgettable performance of Mahler’s Symphony no. 6 with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. One member has told us:

It was the finest performance I've ever heard of the Sixth Symphony's 2nd movement and of much of the 4th movement too, but the orchestra's consummate technical skill and astonishing precision can mask the extraordinary beauty of the 1st and 3rd movements. (I know this is nit-picking!!)

The orchestra in its own back yard is amazing. The concert hall also contributes to the Berliner Philharmoniker's sound.

No wonder Sir Simon Rattle left London - the acoustics of our much-loved Royal Festival Hall and Royal Albert Hall run a distant second.

I shall never forget this performance - I've never heard an orchestra to match them.

Put simply: a Sixth to die for!

Mahler Symphony no. 3

Congratulations to Thomas Neale, Director of Music at New College School Oxford, for putting together this impressive musical and community event at Merton College Oxford on 29 June.

GMS UK was proud to sponsor this performance where organist David Briggs played his own organ transcription of Mahler Symphony no. 3.

Lucie Špičková, contralto, and choirs of adults, children and young people from Merton College, New College School Oxford and St Christopher’s Primary School Oxford, joined together for this special performance.

It is one of GMS UK’s priorities to bring Mahler’s work to the attention of new audiences who may not have heard it before. We know from experience that performing a work at a young age can set up a lifelong interest in a composer (and often a lifelong love!)

Congratulations once again!

GMS UK-SPONSORED WORKSHOP WEEKEND

Congratulations to the Blue Light Symphony Orchestra!
GMS UK was proud to sponsor the orchestra’s Workshop Weekend at the Greycoat Hospital School in Westminster, London on 1st and 2nd June.
This is an amazing voluntary orchestra! The musicians are police officers, firefighters, ambulance personnel, other NHS and medical professionals and a few extra friends. They tell us that this is the world’s only orchestra for all Emergency Services personnel.

Click here to see an extract (on YouTube) from the orchestra’s play-through of the Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony no. 5.  
Their conductor Seb Valentine tells us:

The Orchestra is very keen to do some more Mahler and so am I. It is an interesting coincidence that I came to this piece at the same time in my life that he wrote it and I certainly understand it in a way I would not have done when I was younger.

Your members may also be interested to know we are doing a concert at St John’s Smith Square on Friday 11 October 2024 at 7.30 pm of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 5. Mahler Society members would be very welcome to come and support the emergency services and enjoy some great music. Tickets will be available from the St John’s website soon.

On 12 May we held our long-awaited Study Day with GMS UK Vice President Gavin Plumley, the distinguished cultural historian, broadcaster, author and lecturer.

His subject this year was Mahler Symphony no. 6.

Our member Chris Kettle was in the audience and he wrote a review of this special day - possibly Gavin’s best ever for the Mahler Society! Click here

Betty Makharinsky, soprano and Pavel Timofeyevsky, piano

From north London in April 2024 we were transported to Mahler’s Vienna.

GMS UK’s concert in memory of our late Secretary Sue Johnson (who died suddenly in 2022) was a huge success. In the intimate venue ‘The Red Hedgehog’ (named after the Vienna hotel where Brahms ate and drank) our 50-strong audience heard a concert programme that truly enabled our artists to show their sensitivity, their skill as musicians and their knowledge of Mahler’s world.   

We heard the Rückert-Lieder, plus Lieder from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the Adagietto from Mahler 5 (arr. for piano by Flint). We heard Lieder from two contemporaries of Mahler: his one-time room-mate Hugo Wolf and the younger and less well known Johanna Müller-Hermann, one of a number of significant female figures in Vienna at the time. We heard Four Ballades for piano by Brahms, and Lieder by Schumann and Richard Strauss.

While Betty and Pavel were rehearsing they sent us the following message:

Mahler’s song repertoire is really gratifying and enjoyable to rehearse; there’s a lot of room to experiment with different interpretations that bring out different elements of this beautiful music. Preparing this programme has been such a lovely opportunity for us to take our duo work to the next level! We’ve been performing together for almost 10 years now. We’re both really looking forward to sharing these songs and piano music with you all.

Their enjoyment was evident on the night (as was ours)! Some of our audience had travelled many miles to join us, from Hampshire and Sussex, the Home Counties and all parts of Greater London.

Betty and Pavel are engaging performers who communicate well with their audience, when introducing and when performing the works. Betty’s interpretations showed sincerity as we saw a full range of emotions - sad or bright, resigned or spirited, flirtatious or enamoured, never cloying. Betty is a classical soprano, educator and producer.

Pavel is a skilled accompanist, a highly experienced solo performer, a composer, arranger and lecturer. As his family had known our late Secretary Sue Johnson for many years, Pavel was glad to have this concert dedicated to her memory as she was “a very dear and very special friend”.

GMS UK is proud to have presented this concert as part of our programme of supporting young professional musicians.

Colin Matthews at the Elgar Society, London

GMS UK has an excellent relationship with other music societies, including the Elgar Society. On 4 March, the Elgar Society’s London Branch welcomed 12 of our members to their evening with Colin Matthews the composer who, as a teenager, famously contacted Deryck Cooke to comment on the recently published performing version of Mahler Symphony no. 10. 

Colin and his elder brother David, who also became a composer, worked with Deryck Cooke on a number of revisions and improvements to the score.

Subsequently, Colin Matthews worked with Imogen Holst, Benjamin Britten and other notable composers, besides establishing his own successful career as a composer.

GMS UK members were delighted to be in London for the evening - one had travelled from Norfolk to London especially to hear Colin! Now that’s what we call commitment!!

Ealing Symphony Orchestra

On 25 February 2024 several GMS UK members from London heard the Ealing Symphony Orchestra perform Mahler’s Symphony no. 3 with mezzo soprano Harriet Williams.

GMS UK has created strong links with this voluntary orchestra. We admire their ambition as they and their musical director John Gibbons often perform works that are ‘out of the ordinary’ and rarely played. These have included three world premieres - William Alwyn’s Violin Concerto and Second Piano Concerto, and Robert Still’s Violin Concerto.

One of our GMS UK members, Nalen Anthoni, has written a review of the performance of Mahler’s Symphony no. 3:

About 50 years ago, critic Philip Barford said: “The Third Symphony (1902), perhaps more than any other work by Mahler, shows his approach to both human experience and to symphonic structure. Musically it fuses different stylistic levels. Programmatically it knits together a wealth of ideas and associations”.

But it appears that the composer only revealed the meanings of the six movements to his friend the conductor Willem Mengelberg who believes that the work has “deep humanistic content and sets out  to project something of the vision of brotherhood expressed in Beethoven’s Ninth.”

Profound words; and there is no question that John Gibbons, conducting the Ealing Symphony Orchestra, offered an interpretation that delved the depths as they felt them.

The result was also a meticulously rehearsed, carefully-prepared and presented performance. Thank you.
– Nalen Anthoni

This concert, which was a sell-out, had the advantage of introducing Mahler’s music to some families of young singers for the first time - the orchestra was supplemented by choirs from local schools (besides the experienced St Albans Chamber Choir). One family member in the audience said she had ‘never heard music like this before’ and had really enjoyed it. She welcomed our suggestion of other Mahler works that she might like to listen to.

New audiences of today are the Society members of tomorrow!

The ESO, the additional musicians - lots of brass and percussion - and the choirs all displayed huge commitment, stamina, energy, concentration and skill - they must have been exhausted afterwards!

One audience member commented that ‘they were playing like angels’ and another that it was hard to believe it is an amateur orchestra (although the musicians prefer the term ‘voluntary’).

GMS UK Study Evening

In London on 24 January Kevin Carey, the editor of our journal Wayfarer, delivered an excellent talk with musical examples on Gustav Mahler and Bruno Walter. The audience heard that Bruno Walter never conducted Mahler’s Symphonies 3, 6, 7, or 10. Kevin’s view is that Walter admired Mahler more than he understood him intellectually, even though he understood him up to a point. We heard about the links between Mahler's music and Schubert's melodic line, Bach's counterpoint and Berlioz's orchestral colour.

After the talk, as Kevin answered questions he revealed his extensive knowledge of Mahler’s music, both during the composer’s lifetime and after his death. Kevin assessed the contribution of 20th and 21st century conductors, highlighting the contribution of Jascha Horenstein (1898-1973) among others. Kevin’s challenging conclusion about Bruno Walter was that Walter was a conservative classicist who tended to downplay Mahler's emotional content, and that if he could have conducted Mahler like Mozart, he would have done!

Want to take issue with Kevin Carey’s assessment?

Read the full presentation in a future issue of our journal Wayfarer. To receive your copy, join the Society! Contact us

GUSTAV MAHLER’S LETTER OF INTENT AND ALMA MAHLER’S LAMENT

Our Chairman Anthony Rauman attended a launch event in London in January 2024. He tells us:

“ Marsha Swanson is related to Gustav Mahler through his uncle, Joseph Mahler, and she has clearly inherited the Mahler musical gene. Marsha's premier performance of her album New Life Experience took place in London’s Shepherd's Bush in January 2024. Her songs are in a romantic, popular style. Although in a different musical genre, the romantic theme of love depicted in Gustav Mahler's compositions was tenderly re-interpreted in Marsha's song: 'Gustav Mahler's letter of Intent' - Marsha’s touching tribute to Gustav and Alma’s love for each other. What a thoroughly enjoyable evening, courtesy of another talented member of the Mahler family! ”

GMS UK Chairman Anthony Raumann joined John Warner’s performance of the Adagietto from Mahler Symphony no. 5 in London in January 2024.

John Warner is the Founder and Artistic Director of Orchestra for the Earth and the Choir of the Earth. He began 2024 by teaching a group of non-professionals how to sing the Adagietto. The Movement was set to a poem by Gustav Mahler in which he declared his love for Alma. This was an innovative choral performance. Participants could book a singing session in advance to learn their part, or simply practice their part using an online video.

The event started with a rehearsal and lasted all day. It ended with a performance of the Adagietto to the family and friends of participants, giving everyone a chance to feel the warmth and passion of this iconic Mahler work.

Anthony Raumann thoroughly enjoyed his ‘debut’. He tells us: “John Warner is quite amazing in pulling off a one-day rehearsal before the performance at 5pm”.

We say, Well Done to John and to all the performers too!