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What’s My Mahler? A campaign is launched to find out through The Birmingham Mahler Cycle 2010/11 (BK)

 

Gustav Mahler’s music has the power to divide even the most adoring of music fans and  to explore this a new campaign called - My Mahler - aims to awaken the passion for this extraordinary composer as part of the The Birmingham Mahler Cycle 2010/11.

The Birmingham Mahler Cycle, a year-long celebration of great music-making by the CBSO and the Birmingham International Concert Season's visiting orchestras at Birmingham's Town Hall and Symphony Hall, will showcase Mahler on a scale that the city has never experienced before, in commemoration of the double anniversary of the composer’s birth (150 years) and death (100 years)

My Mahler (www.mymahler.co.uk)  will bring together music afficionados and those experiencing Mahler for the first time, young and old, to capture the sheer wealth of views and powerful emotional reactions that Mahler’s music inspires. The campaign will bring together thoughts, feelings and reactions to Mahler’s music, whether moving the listener to tears, sending a shiver down the spine, or engendering a deep sense of peace or even frustration. Each experience is deeply personal and this campaign hopes to capture that wealth of feeling through videos, comment or thoughts by visiting www.mymahler.co.uk or follow us on  @mymahler on Twitter.

Stephen Maddock, CBSO Chief Executive said: “Mahler wrote music that has the power to speak to each of us as individuals, to express our hopes and fears as well as celebrate the joys of living. Very few composers are able to generate such diverse emotions. Through My Mahler, the joint campaign between our Orchestra and Town Hall and Symphony Hall, we want to harness the wealth of feeling that goes hand-in-hand with this enigmatic music.”

Andrew Jowett,  Symphony Hall's  Director said: “This is a first for Birmingham: a year-long cycle of Mahler concerts that unites our Orchestra in Residence with some of the greatest conductors of our time alongside visiting conductors and their orchestras. It’s an ambitious project but, coupled with My Mahler, we hope to engage passion for classical music in our city and beyond like never before.”

The Birmingham Mahler Cycle will see top conductors and orchestras taking to the stages of Symphony Hall and Town Hall throughout the year-long celebration. The CBSO, which celebrates its 90^th birthday in November, will play with a series of world-class conductors including its acclaimed Music Director Andris Nelsons, and will also see the return of Sir Simon Rattle and Sakari Oramo. Visiting orchestras and their conductors, including Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Antonio Pappano and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra from Rome along with Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra, will also appear as part of the Cycle – it’s an unmissable musical feast in the heart of the UK.

Full details of the Birmingham Mahler cycle are available on both the Town Hall Symphony Hall web site  and on the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's site.

 

Seen and Heard International will review all events in the Mahler cycle. The first is the Symphony No 8 with Andris Nelsons and the CBSO on September 26th.

Bill Kenny

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