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inhoud:

• 1880 - Professional orientation 
• 1880 - conductor in Bad Hall and Laibach 
• 1883 - Olmütz, Vienna and Kassel 
• 1885-1886 - Prague 
• 1886 - Leipzig 
• 1888 - 1891 - Budapest
• 1891 - 1897 - Hamburg

Mahler as conductor of the „philharmonic concerts"

MAHLER AND HIS „INFERNAL THEATER LIFE"

21 Years old

It may be taken for granted that Mahler wanted to put an end to the starvation existence, that he scraped as piano teacher during his student days, and that he made for that reason the decision to use his musical gifts and acquired knowledge to earn his living - even at the price to have to follow a theater career.

 The fact is that he concluded a „general acknowledgment" for five years with the Viennese theatrical agent Gustav Lewy on May 12th 1880. According to this contract, Lewy covenanted to look after Mahler's „whole theatrical matters" against five percent of his respective fee. With this contract, Mahler put himself at the theater's mercy - The „infernal theater life", as he apostrophized it later.

The first job, that Lewy found for him, was a post as a conductor at the summer theater in Bad Hall (Upper Austria) with a monthly salary of thirty guldens and a „playing fee" of fifty kreuzers. Mahler worker here only sic weeks (approximately from May 20th to July 1st 1880). His scope of duties was to conduct operettas and to accompany farces with music.

 In autumn 1881, he went to Laibach, today Ljubljana (Sovenia), at that time capital of the duchy Krain, as conductor at the „Landschaftliche Theater" (regional theater). Here, an orchestra of 18 musicians and a choir of 14 singers were at his disposal, the soloists were mostly engaged from guest opera companies at the theater. His work covered in about equal shares opera, operetta, Singspiel and stage music. Despite the provincial limitation of means, he could look back at the end of the season 1881/82 - contrary to the unproductive weeks in Bad Hall - on several artistic successes.

 In March 1882, he performed as pianist at the „Philharmonische Gesellschaft" (philharmonic society). The local press celebrated the conductor as „well trained musician, who takes his difficult task seriously".

Mahler wanted to spent the autumn and winter 1882/83 as usual in Vienna working on his „Rübezahl" and keeping company with the friend of his youth.

 But the possibility of a new engagement ensued and he became conductor at the royal-municipal theater of the Moravian town Olmütz (today Olomouc, Czech Republic) in mid-January 1883. He stayed there only till mid-March 1883, because the season was stopped prematurely for lack of money.

 During the same month, the found work as choir conductor at the Carltheater in Vienna, where an Italian opera stagione gave guest performances till early inMay.

 In summer 1883, he went for the first time to Bayreuth: „However low my mood may be, when I think of Wagner, I became good-humored. That a light like his could ever fill the world!"

 On October 1st 1883, he took an engagement for three years as second conductor at the court theater in Kassel. From the start, his job was unsatisfactory, because as „second man" he was not entrusted with the „classicical works", but he had above all to supervise the operas by Lortzing, Weber, Donizetti, Meyerbeer and Marschner.

 His probably most important success in Prague was a concert on February 21st 1886, where he conducted from memory Beethoven's „Ninth Symphony", Mozart's G minor Symphony and the scherzo from Bruckner's „Third Symphony".

 In Prague, three od his piano lieder were also performed for the first time: „Frühlingsmorgen", „Hans und Grete" and „Ging heut' morgen übers Feld".

In August 1886, he made his debut as second conductor at the municipal theater in Leipzig. Here, he had to hold his own beside the first conductor Arthur Nikisch. From January 1887 on, he acted for the sickened Nikisch and took over the whole repertoire: In the season 1887/88, he conducted 54 different works in no less than 214 performances.

 In addition he took even time to draft his first symphony and to arrange Carl Maria Weber's opera torso „Die drei Pintos" - for Mahler had met in Leipzig the family of Carl Maria von Weber's grandson. He completed Weber's sketches of the comic opera and performed the stage work for the first time on January 20th 1888 at the municipal theater of Leipzig. The success was great, Mahler was celebrated with thundering applause, cheers and laurel wreathes, „his" opera was performed within a year in Dresden, Prague, Bremen, Breslau (Wroclaw), Frankfurt, Hamburg, Kassel and finally even at the court opera of Vienna. So, Mahler became well-known and famous in the musical world at first neither as conductor nor as symphonist, but as „composer" of a comic opera by Carl Maria von Weber.

From autumn 1888 (after Felix Mottl's retirement) to his premature resignation in spring 1891, caused by a change of the director, Mahler was director of the Royal-Hungarian Opera in Budapest. Here, he devoted himself to the setting-up of a national, indipendent opera culture, he tried to establish an indigenous Hungarian ensemble and put the opera „Brankovics György" by the national composer Ferenc Erkel on the stage.

 In January 1889, he staged the unabridged first performance of Wagner's „Rheingold" and „Walküre" in Hungarian language. He needed more than 80 rehearsals for the production. Another milestone on his way to international fame as conductor was the new production of Mozart's„Don Giovanni" in 1890 - a performance praised as being authentic by Johannes Brahms.

 But the première of his First Symphony on November 20th 1889 was a failure. A reviewer described the work as being „just as confused and vague as Mahler's work as opera director".

 From that time on, Mahler had more and more to struggle against difficulties as opera director in Budapest. Finally he rescinded his ten-year contract by reason of artistic disagreements with the new director Count Zichy and resigned his post after receipt of a high sum of indemnity in March 1891.

 Mahler had a relatively free hand in the choice and arrangement of the program and the ensemble. The red thread in his programming were and continue to be Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. In Hamburg, he conducted for the first time the complete „Ring des Nibelungen".

 In addition, he worked on his Second Symphony and conducted also single concerts, such as the performances of Bruckner's „Te Deum", on which he reported to the composer: „I have performed one of your works... Both the players and the whole public were deeply moved. Now, Bruckner has made his triumphant entry in Hamburg."

 Also the guest performance of the opera of Hamburg in London in 1892 contributed much to Mahler's international reputation as conductor.

In September 1898, a delegation of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra approached Mahler with the request to succeed Hans Richter in conducting the philharmonic subscription concerts. On November 1898, Mahler conducted his first „philharmonic concert".

 But Mahler's tie with the philharmonic orchestra was of short duration: Mahler was a courageous innovator and always keen of experimenting. When he played Beethoven's string quartet in F minor with the complete philharmonic string orchestration and set about making alterations to the instrumentation of Beethoven's symphonies, he provoked the opposition of the public and the critics. The performance of the Ninth Symphony in February 1900 developed into an affair, as Mahler ordered the reinforcement of the wind section, the stiffening of the expression marks and other tone retouches. On the occasion of the repetition of the concert, he made distribute leaflets, in which he justified his proceeding with Beethoven's deafness on the one hand and with the enormous „intensification of his conceptions to find new forms of expression" on the other hand.

 In June 1900, he made a concert tour with the philharmonic orchestra to the world's fair in Paris with five concerts, but only the last two of them were successful.

 Despite important performances of great works of the symphonic literature, the inner resistance of the philharmonic orchestra to Mahler's „tyrannical" rigidity grew and disagreements became more frequent. In April 1901, Mahler renounced finally conducting the philharmonic concerts. Court conductor Joseph Hellmesberger succeeded him.