November 2, 2009: Gustav Mahler in the age of iTunes

Having been interested enough in Gustavo Dudamel's debut as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic to write about both its broadcast on Public Television and the Deutsche Grammophon release of the second half of the concert, the performance of Gustav Mahler's first symphony, through iTunes, my attention was caught this morning by a Press Release from the Vice President of Publicity for Universal Music Classical, which handles Deutsche Grammophon.  Apparently, the iTunes release strategy has served all of the involved parties quite well:

On October 8th the Los Angeles Philharmonic formally opened their season with a gala concert at the Walt Disney Concert hall featuring Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D. Deutsche Grammophon was there to record the concert and released the digital-only recording on iTunes through the DG Concerts series on October 20th. In the first week of release the recording shot to the top of the charts and landed at #1 on Billboard's Classical Traditional and Classical Overall Charts respectively, beating crossover and traditional recordings alike. Additionally, the album reached #1 on itunes Classical Chart and #12 on Billboard's New Artist Chart simultaneously.

I have never thought of Mahler in these competitive terms;  but then I doubt that Mahler ever thought of what he was doing in terms of a "business model!"  For that matter I doubt that he could have grasped the role that a technology like the Internet could play in drawing attention to his music.

Notwithstanding that Dudamel may be the "man of the hour," this led me to do some searching on iTunes to see just how much of a presence Mahler has there;  and I was very pleased with what I saw.  Back in 2007 I wrote on my blog about the possibility that we would be entering a period of "Mahler turf wars," much of which might take place over the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), where Valery Gergiev had become principal conductor and Michael Tilson Thomas was "Permanent Guest Conductor."  Thomas had launched a major project to record the full canon of Mahler symphonies on the San Francisco Symphony's own CD label.  Through a search for "Mahler" "symphony" and "Thomas" I determined that Symphonies 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 10 (only the first movement) are available on iTunes (recognizing that, by searching for "symphony," I was leaving out Das Lied von der Erde).  [Note added November 3:  Having been informed by the Senior Publicist that all the the symphonies are available on iTunes, I repeated this search.  I have confirmed her claim.  The full canon of symphonies, including Das Lied von der Erde, is available through iTunes.  The only thing that seems to have changed between my two searches is in upgrading of the iTunes software!]  The Gergiev releases currently on iTunes, which, following Thomas' lead, are on an LSO label, cover Symphonies 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8.  Both sets of releases are based on recordings made during "live" performance (as was the case with the Dudamel release), which means that those of us interested in the "virtual concert" experience have much to draw upon when it comes to Mahler.

I could have continued this "search experiment" all day;  but I decided to restrict my attention to the complete sets I currently have on CD.  It turns out that, controversial as some people have decided they are, the complete recordings that Giuseppe Sinopoli made for Deutsche Grammophon are available as a single package through iTunes.  On the other hand the collection that Georg Solti made with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is represented by only Symphonies 1, 5, 6, and 8.  What strikes me the most about this thoroughly unscientific experiment is how poorly represented the ninth symphony is;  but I am happy to report that the link to the BBC iPlayer Web site, from which one can hear Bernard Haitink conduct the LSO in a Proms 2009 performance of this symphony, as I reported this past July, is still alive and well.

Thus, while Dudamel may be attracting all of the attention, I am hoping that his attention may prompt further interest in Mahler.  Those who are so prompted will find an abundance of listening opportunities, just by browsing iTunes.  Furthermore, I am not going to fall into the trap of saying anything about which of all these options are my favorites.  The fact is that each of the conductors I have identified (and quite a few I have not mentioned) have much to inform us about the experience of serious listening to any of Mahler's symphonies.  Nothing would please me more than the Dudamel release encouraging browsers to seek out the other performance of the first symphony, particularly in light of the mixed critical reaction of how Dudamel shaped his own way of negotiating this score.  Well … one thing might please me more, which would be Dudamel directing his own personal path through the other symphonies in the Mahler canon.  If those efforts are all released through DG Concerts, I could well finally find myself hooked on iTunes!