Thomas Hampson und Joe Horowitz: „Mahler, New York, and Cultural Leadership – a conversation“ (including film clips)

Joseph Horowitz is the first music historian to bring a detailed knowledge of musical New York, ca. 1900, to the topic of Mahler’s American career. Unbeknownst to Mahler, New York was already a world musical capital — in which Antonin Dvorak and Anton Seidl cast long shadows. Mahler, by comparison, did not engage with the quest for an American compositional canon. Henry Krehbiel’s notorious Mahler obituary, declaring Mahler’s New York years (1908-1911) a “failure,” can only be understood in the context of New York’s hunger for sustained cultural leadership – a topic newly pertinent today, with classical music in decline. Mahler’s eventual successor at the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, offered lessons in arts pedagogy in which Mahler’s symphonies played a vital role.

Joseph Horowitz’s fifteen books include two novels dealing with Seidl, Dvorak, and Mahler in the New World. His book-in-progress is about Leonard Bernstein and cultural leadership.

Thomas Hampson, an eminent Mahler exponent, was one of Bernstein’s most favored singers.