Regarding Italians, Ralph Moore has rightly drawn attention to Abbado and Sinopoli. I don't know how major Chailly he thinks is but he certainly does Mahler a lot. A little further back, Giulini was (as ever) selective over the ones he did but (again as ever) among the finest in those. Further back still, Bruno Maderna was one of the greatest of all mahler conductors.
While it is true that an enthusiasm for Mahler tends to run along national lines, I think one can certainly make a case for two great Italian Mahler conductors: Abbado and Sinopoli. Regarding Russians, only Barshai comes to mind, with recordings of the Fifth, Sixth, Ninth and Tenth, in his own performing version of the latter - and although there is a complete set of symphonies by Svetlanov, I would hardly call them major.
I think, also, national differences once played a part. None of the older school of British conductors such as Wood, Harty, Boult, Sargent, Cameron, Goossens-with Barbirolli being the exception- appear to have taken much interest in Mahler's music. I remember , in a TV programme, Walton saying that he regarded Mahler as the very devil in music (only for his wife to interject "But you've been listening to a lot of it lately!"). I'm hard put to think of any notable conductors from France, Italy, Russia or the Scandinavian countries who were notable Mahler exponents. The music seems to have had a great appeal for the Dutch however.
Your point about knowing the music only from recordings is very interesting. I have recently been reflecting on some of the major works of the repertoire that, in over sixty years of concert-going I've never heard in the concert hall and that there are some surprising omissions, Beethoven 4th Symphony and Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky Pathetique and Debussy's La Mer being among them.
Certainly the only Mahler Symphony I've ever heard live was in my student days when the college orchestra played the first symphony; Trevor Harvey conducted the performance while the chief college conductor Vernon Handley - as far as I remember -never included any Mahler in any of his concerts.
Mahler, it seems, has always been an acquired taste - or not!
John Culshaw, in Putting the Record Straight (Secker & Warburg, 1981), declared a strong aversion to Mahler's music, writing that it made him feel sick: "not metaphorically but physically sick. I find his strainings and heavings, juxtaposed with what always sounds (to me) like faux-naif music of the most calculated type, downright repulsive, and there seems to be nothing I can do about it other than admit the fact.”
Georg Solti transitioned, telling High Fidelity magazine in 1967: “Mahler bored me. He came to me, or I came to him, eight or nine years ago. Up to then his symphonies were all pieces and bits. Now I see their form. I love them. It is not enough to like music. You must love. And love means change.”
My own Mahler discovery was attending a 1969 Proms concert of the Resurrection (conducted by Bernard Haitink) - quite inspirational - and perhaps if Noah is in range of this kind of experience, it would also be his best introduction.
As far as recordings are concerned, I've come to think that the Mahler soundscape is not well suited to gramophone reproduction, even with the advent of multi-dimensional audio. The sheer scale and, certainly with the Resurrection , spatiality of his music are all but impossible to fully register under normal listening conditions. It's also struck me that his more acidic sonorities bring out the worst in less-than-perfect audio systems.
It's worth noting that in Britain, at least, Mahler didn't make the sort of headway with the public, or commentators, as was the case from the 1960s onward.
The Pelican book "The Symphony" (published 1949) has a section on Mahler written by Geoffrey Sharp in which his comments include the following :
"As a composer he seldom knew where he was going, neither can we; but it is worth while suggesting that the smaller the form in which he wrote the more convincing the result."
"Mahler's aim undoubtedly was "expression" but it is doubtful whether what he wanted to express was always worth the trouble he took over it."
"Mahler's attempts to come to terms with the realms of childlike fantasy were always childishly inadequate and there is no doubt at all that he was often vulgar."
"...some of the garrulous and fragmentary pasticcios he calls upon to serve as movements of symphonies."
"Mahler's music alternately fascinates and appals with its peculiar kaleidoscopic confusion of the ridiculous and the sublime, often on the same page."
The latter two remarks seem to foreshadow Noah's lament "Mahler seems scatterbrained and stylistically all over the place."
My typing finger now is demanding a rest but I shall look at the chapter on Bruckner and report on any opinions from the 1940s that I think might be of interest later.
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