Gustav Mahler usually associated the coming of spring with a welcome sense of calm, but things are rather different for those involved in organising Amsterdam’s forthcoming almighty Mahler Festival. For two weeks in May, the city plays host to a musical extravaganza that should have happened a hundred years after the first festival in 1920. “We were all ready to go in March 2020,” says programmer Marian van der Meer from her office in the Concertgebouw, where she has spent the last five years undertaking the considerable logistical task of programming what will be the city’s third Mahlerthon. “It was spring, just about now in fact – and, well, you know the rest.”
It’s been no small task to assemble all over again many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras and their conductors, not to mention choirs, soloists, chamber ensembles, speakers, film-makers and even a travelling hammer of fate. “Yes,” says van der Meer, with the air of someone who can’t quite believe what’s about to happen, “there’s going to be a lot of Mahler!”
Although Mahler didn’t really love Amsterdam as a city – far too busy, far too wet – he fell in love with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under the baton of the young Willem Mengelberg, at whose enthusiastic invitation Mahler returned several times. Ambitious and uncompromising, Mengelberg had become the Concertgebouw’s principal conductor at the age of only 24, and his rigorous attention to detail had seriously raised the orchestra’s game. After a performance of his Third Symphony in 1903, Mahler wrote home to Alma “I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. The orchestra is outstanding and very well prepared.” When Mengelberg programmed the Fourth Symphony, Mahler hailed him as a genius for putting it on the programme twice, once before the interval and once again after, so that the Amsterdam audience could familiarise themselves with this new and challenging sound world.
Such lavish devotion to his music couldn’t but impress the visiting celebrity who said “I feel I have found a second musical homeland in Amsterdam.” It was this mutual sense of adoration that inspired Mengelberg to establish Amsterdam as Mahler’s Bayreuth with a fortnight of performances – under the eyes and ears of Alma Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg – of all the symphonies.
Back then the festival was very much an in-house affair, with every note played by the Concertgebouw Orchestra themselves. After the war years, Mengelberg was dismissed from the Concertgebouw, having capitulated to the Nazi occupiers’ ban on Mahler’s music, and the festival didn’t return until 1995, when the Concertgebouw was joined by both Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics. This year, the orchestras and choirs will come from all over world – as will the audience. Nearly half the tickets have been sold to Mahler fans from beyond the Netherlands.
May is already busy enough in Amsterdam, with hotels full of visitors expecting tulip fields and sunlit canals. Marian van der Meer is grateful to her Concertgebouw colleagues, and the logistics teams of the guest orchestras, who have worked tirelessly to make sure everybody gets a room to stay in, as well as somewhere to put their instruments. “Our hall is such an old building, and it lacks a lot of the space that you will find in in more modern concert halls. Every little bit of room there will be filled with instruments, especially on the days that the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Klaus Mäkelä are rehearsing Mahler 8 in the morning and the guest orchestra needs to come in to do the concert in the evening. That gives us a big headache!
“But,” she says, putting an optimistic spin on the organisation of the work nicknamed Symphony of a Thousand, “it could have been worse! At least the orchestra is already here and only one of the four choirs is coming from outside the Netherlands (Chœur de l'Orchestre de Paris).” Even so, several rows of audience seats will be given over to choir members for the evening, making that concert an even hotter ticket.
So how did four orchestras decide between them who would do what: sealed bids under the door of the Concertgebouw? Batons at dawn? “There were no fights,” says van der Meer. “Everyone got their first choice. It was lucky for us that Klaus Mäkelä wanted to do numbers One and Eight. Ivan Fischer will be doing numbers Two and Five with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, which will be very special, they are an exceptional orchestra.” They will also be joined by mezzo-soprano Anna Lucia Richter for Kindertotenlieder.
“Jaap van Zweden will be conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Symphony no. 6, which he played here at the 1995 festival when he was the leader of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and they are also doing Symphony no. 7. We thought we would like to have an Asian orchestra because people from everywhere love Mahler. So we approached the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Japanese radio orchestra from Tokyo, with Fabio Luisi as Chief Conductor. They have a special tradition with Mahler because in 1930 they were the first orchestra to make an electronic recording of the whole of Symphony no. 4.” Longstanding champions of Mahler’s music, the NHK will be joined in Symphony no. 4 by soprano Ying Fang and by mezzo soprano Olesya Petrova for Symphony no. 3. ‘Which leaves just the Berliner Philharmoniker…’ that Dutch understatement again. Kirill Petrenko will be making his way down the famous red staircase to conduct the orchestra in Symphony no. 9.
And from here we are in the realm of the unconfirmed as, according to the programme, Mahler’s final work, the unfinished 10th symphony, will be the domain of the Berlin Phil and Daniel Barenboim. In the light of the legendary conductor’s recent announcement that he is suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and will continue to work only as his health allows, May suddenly seems a dangerously long way off. Van der Meer is keeping her fingers crossed. “They tell me the same in Berlin – they are hoping, but they don’t know. Of course, nobody can guarantee, but at this moment there is not much more to do than wait and hope.” If Barenboim does make it to the Amsterdam to conduct Mahler’s final work, there will be nowhere else in the world to be that night. How anyone will cope emotionally as the final cello pizzicato rings out into the iconic Grote Zaal remains to be seen.
As well as the big symphonic works, the festival will include the complete song repertoire, sung by an impressive roster of international soloists, some of whom will be making their Concertgebouw debut, accompanied by the pianist Julius Drake. A series of talks and informal Mahler Nights will run alongside the music in the Recital Room, and there’s even a ‘Mahler walk’ guided by the Concertgebouw’s chief percussionist Herman Rieken that will take you around some of the places the composer visited while he was in town. There are documentary films at the Eye Museum – just a quick hop on a boat across the water from Central Station – and, across the Museumplein from the Concertgebouw, the Rijksmuseum will be cranking up Mahler’s very own pianola rolls, so that visitors can enjoy the eerie sensation of watching the keys ripple up and down under the invisible fingers of the great composer.
For anyone lucky enough to be in Amsterdam for what van der Meer assures me will be two gloriously sunny weeks, but who has not managed to get tickets for the festival, or even anyone who might be just a little Mahler-curious, all the concerts will be shown for free outside on the big screen on Museumplein. “When all the tickets sold out so quickly, we thought we’d better do something,” van der Meer explains. “We have plenty of seating out there – and people can sit and watch the whole thing or come and go as they please, get a drink, something to eat.” And does she expect there will be much demand? “Oh, we have space out there for about two thousand people. And we have cover for… well, it’s not going to rain!”
What is it about Mahler’s music that continues to bring in new generations of audiences, and in such numbers? Many people, van der Meer agrees, will have heard the Second Symphony for the first time only recently, as conducted by Bradley Cooper in the Bernstein biopic Maestro. She agrees that there’s something about the way Mahler’s music can hold and explore uncertainty that is perennially consoling.
But what about Amsterdam as Mahler’s ‘Bayreuth’? I venture respectfully to suggest that the Dutch are not known internationally for outbursts of romantic sentiment. Van der Meer laughs. “The Dutch, I think, are famous for being down to earth, a way of life that’s all about business and doe normaal” (the Dutch instruction to fit in and not stand out). “Mahler stands in contrast to that, an escape from that. The music is about the more spiritual things in life, the more difficult things, and gives us a way of plugging in to those things that are hard to talk about. This is what makes him such a universal composer, with universal values.”
Amsterdam’s Mahler Festival 2025 runs from 9th–18th May at the Concertgebouw.
This article was sponsored by Het Concertgebouw.
