Mahler’s Instant Community

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a box seat at Carnegie Hall looking down on an empty stage. It was only a few minutes before the concert was to begin and the hall was still half-empty. The orchestra was still waiting in the wings, and I couldn’t help noticing the moment.

In just a few minutes the whole room would be changed, the environment transformed, and a new community created. In other words, the event itself had brought people of shared interests together.

I had flown from the mid-west with this concert as part of my agenda for being in New York. Other friends had come from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to be here for this historic occasion. What we had in common was a love of Mahler’s music, and this WAS a rare event celebrating that composer. The Berlin Staatsoper would play all of Mahler’s symphonies in order of their composition under two conductors at the top of their game. Barenboim and Boulez couldn’t be more opposite in their approaches to performing Mahler, but the audience was united over this concert series from the very first note.

Even the applause for Thomas Quasthoff before Kindertotenlieder began seemed different than virtually any applause I had experienced. This was going to be something special we seemed to say. The hall quieted, and the first notes began. In an instant, the community formed, congealed and unified into one silent mass of listeners.

The magic lasted for two hours and then the hall emptied. I found myself asking what would remain of this newly-founded community. I walked with friends down 57th Street to the Istanbul Café, and we talked about the concert. Over Turkish coffee, a series of spin-off subjects ranging from Bernstein to Mitropoulos kept the magic going for another hour until the rain outside had ended and we hailed a cab to return to the apartment.

Has that community disappeared? I don’t think so, at least not yet. It remains in the minds of those who shared the experience. But with each day, the glue that held us together weakens.

I’m told that later in the cycle, on the Mahler 5th concert, representatives from the Gustav Mahler Society of New York were busy on the sidewalks handing out flyers to capitalize on a public already predisposed to the cause.

It occurs to me that Carnegie Hall could have done the same thing capturing e mail addresses for future Mahleriana as part of the ticket sale: “Would you like to be notified anytime there is a concert featuring Mahler here?” would have been tantamount to the old McDonald’s money-making phrase, “Do you want fries with that?”

The challenge isn’t simply creating communities; it’s keeping them alive.