Mahler, Bernstein, and “The Marriage”

What did Gustav Mahler and Leonard Bernstein have in common? As is well known, Bernstein was a triumphant advocate of Mahler’s symphonies at a moment when they had yet to enter the mainstream repertoire. And both were outsiders – Mahler as a Jew in Vienna, and Bernstein as someone trying to resolve the oxymoron “American classical musician.”

But in my NPR interview yesterday about my new novel, The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York, I found myself talking about what they did not have in common. Bernstein, conducting the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s, was an exemplary music director. Mahler, conducting the Philharmonic from 1908 to 1911, was judged a “failure” – not as a conductor, but as a cultural leader. Exploring this verdict, I contrast Bernstein’s excavation of little-known American works with Mahler’s inattention to the fledgling American composer. In the process, I have occasion to mull the challenge facing the Philharmonic and other American orchestras right now – a moment when the role of the “music director” must be redefined (the topic of my 7,000-word rant in the current American Scholar).

I also discuss how I found myself sympathetic to the plight of Gustav’s controversial wife, Alma – and so discovered how historical fiction could be a crucial tool for the cultural historian.

Ultimately, Mahler’s supreme importance was not as a conductor or a husband, but as a great composer – a verdict supported by a supremely beautiful orchestral extract (from the slow movement of Mahler’s Fourth) at the close.

Also: I am delighted to announce that Wolke Verlag will publisher a German translation of my novel. 

My thanks, as ever, to Rupert Allman and Jenn White at WAMU, the DC public radio station that produces “1A” – home to my “More than Music” features, and also yesterday’s interview.