MAHLER’S 8TH IN THE TIME OF COVID
The trouble with a pandemic is you can't exactly boast of your contribution in the battle against the invisible virus like you might with a hot war.
The reality for most people was that we were sat in our homes, doing, if not quite nothing, then something, yet with a sense of futility as we waited for the world to return to the old normal or the new Klaus Schwab conceived utopian abnormal.
When I look back on the first lockdown, which I believe was the most existentially incomprehensible one for most people to wrap their heads around, I knew I needed something to settle the restless malaise that was quite quickly turning me into a lockdown zombie.
Luckily, I had received a book for my birthday a few months prior to lockdown that had been collecting dust on my bookshelf called The Eighth : Mahler and the World in 1910 by Stephen Johnson which I had not felt compelled to read until COVID19 forced my hand.
As someone who has listened intensively to Mahler symphonies for nearly twenty years of my life, I had pretty much made my mind up that the 8th symphony would be relegated to obscurity unlike Gustav's 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 9th symphonies, those undisputed masterpieces of late romantic classical music. For some reason the 8th had always given me the impression of being like a stodgy Catholic mass and sweeter than a Viennese Sachertorte.
But perhaps it took this illuminating book and a global pandemic to help me finally unlock the genius and beauty of the 8th symphony as life and death were brought to the foreront of our minds after we'd been cruising idly through what many believed to be the end of history, Fukeyama's famous theory about the end of sociocultural evolution.
As spring blossomed all around while we, as a nation, remained under collective house arrest, my garden bench became a sanctuary as I lay horizontally for many sun filled afternoons listening to this Symphony of a Thousand, meditating on all of its glorious transitions and sublime climaxes. At times I almost felt like a Mahler yogi, dissolving into totality with the 8th as my soundtrack toward enlightenment. It was for me, like being on a spiritual retreat and if I think back on one virtue of that sickly time in our history then it will be to Mahler 8 and its carthartic effect on my anxious soul.
And as if to further enhance my personal realisation of the perfection of Mahler 8, I also managed to share my newfound learning of the piece with my old friend Gorodish (now living in Canada) who was the beneficiary of my latest passion, via text messages, as we mined the catalogues (Stringer-like) for the best recorded version, just as we might have done decades ago when we first began our classical music collections in earnest.
After oscillating between Bertini (EMI) and Sinopoli (DG) we finally discovered Ozawa's mythic recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Phillips which became grail-like in its significance during that time.
I had also developed a particular obsession with the sublime small detail of a mandolin (see video below at 3:50) buried deep within the orchestra texture toward the end of the symphony which I desperately needed to share with someone.
Thankfully, Gorodish understood what the hell I was on about.
After all, what is life if we don't share these things of beauty with others.
Covid never stood a chance.