Status Updates From Gustav Mahler, Volume 2:. V...

I'm reading now the part of the book that details Mahler's courtship with the wretched Alma Schindler. On her diaries: "Alma here reveals her hidden motivation. She loves Mahler not only because he is, as she herself puts it, 'great and important', but also because he appears to her to be weak and defenceless, and because she hopes, thanks to him, to escape from herself and her preoccupation with smutty stories."

The critics hated, hated, hated Mahler's 4th symphony, easily his most "classical" and approachable. "It was nothing but 'technique, calculation, vanity, a morbid and insipid supermusic, a shapeless stylistic monstrosity that collapses under a surfeit of witty details.'" (Theodor Kroyer, quoted by LaGrange) "The first movement could be Daniel in the lion's den, Orpheus slaughtered by the Maenads..." and so on.

Utterly overwhelming book--so much detail, it is very difficult to absorb it all. I have been trying to focus on the details of the works Mahler chose to perform at the Vienna Hofoper. So far, I have made note of all the works performed in his first four seasons--some surprising juxtapositions.