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Schwarz Conducts Mahler 1 Mahler's Symphony no. 1 in D Major

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The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra has a long tradition of performing the music of Gustav Mahler, stretching back to 1922 with the first performance in Liverpool of the Fourth Symphony, and earlier still with performances of the composer’s songs.

The First Symphony was first heard at Philharmonic Hall on 27th October 1954 under the baton of Efrem Kurtz, the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Conductor from 1955-57.

The RLPO was the first British orchestra to mount a complete Mahler cycle, under the baton of Sir Charles Groves, Principal Conductor 1963-1977. Many notable performances of Mahler followed, conducted by Walter Weller, Marek Janowski, Sir Charles Mackerras and Libor Pešek, Principal Conductor 1987-97 with whom the RLPO recorded the Ninth Symphony and gave performances of several symphonies at home and abroad.

A note from Gerard Schwarz:

May I warmly welcome you to the first album of this new RLPO Mahler cycle. I’m extremely proud to make these recordings and enormously grateful to our benefactors Aldham and Avril Robarts, and I hope very much you will wish to stay with us throughout the cycle.

Mahler’s music has been very important to me since I was a child. I grew up surrounded by the décor, language and music of old Vienna, my mother being from Vienna, and my father from the independently minded Vienna suburb of Mödling. I remember well my first hearing Mahler on recordings conducted by Bruno Walter in about 1955. I was overwhelmed by the intensity and beauty of the music.

While still a student during the early 1960s I was in the audience when Leonard Bernstein conducted his first Mahler cycle in New York, and later played many Mahler performances with Bernstein while I was a member of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Mahler’s music is in many ways extremely difficult, both for the musicians and for the audience, yet I believe it to be the summit of the 19th-century Austro-German symphonic canon. Regular performances of Mahler’s extraordinary symphonies must always be at the centre of the concert repertoire of a great orchestra like the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic: it challenges the limits and draws upon the fastnesses of an orchestra’s capabilities; it proves who we are.