MahlerFest Symposium
Saturday, May 18, 2024 | 9:30 AM to 5 PM| FREE
Mountain View United Methodist Church, 355 Ponca Place, Boulder

Tickets not required. You are welcome to attend any sessions and to come and go as needed.

Lunch available for purchase. There will be vegetarian and vegan options but no gluten free option.
Purchase at the door or with the button below.

Jeremy Barham

9:30 AM | Mahler’s Fourth Symphony: Backward Glances in the Journey to the Heights
Jeremy Barham – Author of Mahler in Context

The Fourth Symphony is Mahler’s homage to Viennese Classicism and at the same time an innovative answer to the question of how to progress creatively in a post-Wagnerian era. Looking back in order to move onward, Mahler searches for renewed origins through this Symphony in expressions of childlike innocence, ghostly fears, restless lullabies, and a final transition to fairytale higher realms.

10:45 AM | Mahler and Schubert: Taverns in Paradise
Joseph Horowitz – Author of The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York

An exploration of what the two composers have in common, beginning with sonata and symphonic finales transported to a child’s paradise. How did Mahler “Mahlerize” Schubert’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna and New York? What does that tell us about Schubert? How does Schubert relocate taverns in paradise in his Drei Klavierstücke? And sundry excursions from the quotidian to the divine — with examples at the piano and on video.

12 Noon | Lunch

Keep the conversation going by having lunch with our symposium speakers and other audience members. Lunch will be available for $15. Pay at the door or pre-order now to skip the line. Lunch is vegetarian, vegan, and meat sandwiches, salads, flavored waters, coffee and cookies. No gluten free option, unfortunately but feel free to bring your own.

1 PM | Behind the scenes with Embrace Everything – how a Mahler podcast gets created
Aaron Cohen – Producer and Host of the Embrace Everything – The World of Gustav Mahler Podcast

Join Aaron Cohen as he talks about his process for creating this award-winning podcast. Cohen will explain the challenges of producing an ongoing series of this size, and play examples from the series to demonstrate his methods.

2:45 PM | Mahler in the American Imagination
Matthew Mugmon – Author of Aaron Copland and the American Legacy of Gustav Mahler

How did Mahler’s music rise to prominence in the United States in the 20th century? A number of prominent conductors including, of course, Leonard Bernstein, shaped Mahler’s American legacy in very public ways, but there is far more to this story. Romanticism, modernism, and Jewish identity shaped Mahler’s American reception — through and beyond Bernstein — in surprising ways and courtesy of unexpected figures, including the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, the composer Aaron Copland, and the teacher Nadia Boulanger.

4 PM | Re-evaluating Richard Strauss: A new Urtext edition for the 21st Century
Nick Pfefferkorn & Kenneth Woods – Publishing Director of Breitkopf & Härtel and the MahlerFest Artistic Director

Kenneth Woods interviews Nick Pfefferkorn about Breitkopf and Härtel’s new Urtext Edition of the orchestral music of Richard Strauss, which includes the new edition of Eine Alpensinfonie being performed at this year’s festival and was edited by Pfefferkorn. Why do Richard Strauss’s works merit a new edition? What sources have been used? What major discoveries have been made? It promises to be a fascinating window into the scholarly and practical work that underpins the material that goes on the stands of musicians and conductors worldwide.

What to Expect

Mountain View United Methodist is a beautiful building located in the Frasier Meadows neighborhood. There is plenty of free parking in the lot on the west side of the building and the surrounding surface streets. The main doors are on the west side of the building just south of the sanctuary (and north of the school wing). You’ll enter there and make your way through a spacious lobby to the sanctuary. The church holds about 250 people with chairs on the main floor and pews in the balcony.

The symposium is a casual affair. There will be a short break between each talk. Lunch provides an opportunity to mingle with other Mahlerites and a chance to chat with the symposium speakers.

Return to the MahlerFest 37 homepage.