Vienna Philharmonic
Part of: Franz Welser-Möst, Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice, and Carnegie Hall Live on WQXR
Performers
Vienna Philharmonic
Franz Welser-Möst, Conductor
Program
G. MAHLER Symphony No. 9
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately 90 minutes with no intermission. Please note that there will be no late seating.This Concert in Context
Gustav Mahler completed his Symphony No. 9 in 1909—five years before a war that would profoundly alter the social and cultural fabric of every country across Europe. While Mahler did not live to see the subsequent crises that World War I would unleash across the continent, his native Austria-Hungary had by the turn of the century borne witness to the rising antisemitism and nationalism that would cast a long shadow over the politics of the interwar period. A multinational empire with some 50 million subjects, Mahler’s Austria-Hungary was made up of peoples from across Central and Eastern Europe, including not only Austrians and Hungarians, but Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs, Slovenes, and countless other nationalities. The linguistic and cultural differences inherent in the empire’s makeup made governing an often difficult and unwieldy proposition at the national and local levels, prompting some cynical politicians to look for easy scapegoats to the challenging problems the empire faced in the lead up to World War I. To take only one example, politician Karl Lueger used antisemitism during his tenure as mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910 as a tool for consolidating support over a society riven by differences in language, culture, and nationality. Lueger was greatly admired by a young Adolf Hitler, who saw Mahler’s productions of his beloved Wagner at the Vienna Court Opera during his itinerant years as an aspiring artist in the capital city. As an Austrian of Jewish descent, Mahler’s music would subsequently be designated as entartete Kunst (“degenerate art”) and banned by the Nazis.
—Brendan Fay, author of Classical Music in Weimar Germany