World-Weary Colossus

The nine symphonies of the late Gustav Mahler are colossal, brooding, heaven-storming, seldom-played. This week,* the Radio City Music Hall symphony began to play them all, conducted by Erno Rapee.

Last of the great line of Central European symphonists, Mahler, a Bohemian Jew, has been dead for 30 years, but among musicians his name is still good for a dogfight. In Vienna, for Nazi reasons, Gustav Mahlerstrasse has been renamed Meistersingerstrasse--rendered Gustav Meistersingerstrasse by subversive Viennese. In the U.S., Mahler partisans are organized as intensely as movie-fan clubs. One group awards a Mahler medal to outstanding torchbearers (Philadelphia's Conductor Eugene Ormandy, Boston's Sergei Koussevitzky, German Exile Bruno Walter--Mahler's disciple). Commentator at the broadcasts is Czech Author Franz Werfel, third husband of Mahler's widow.

Brooding, world-weary, Mahler had most to say in the poignant phrases, the long farewells of his last symphony and Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth, a cycle for two voices and orchestra). One of his grandiose symphonies was feelingly described by Sir Donald Francis Tovey: "A musical phantasmagoria in which all the elements that have ever been put into a symphony before are conglomerated with all the musical equivalents of a picaresque novel and a Christmas pantomime. . . . On internal evidence it was written during a holiday at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch."

The Italian Ministry of Popular Culture banned the sale or playing of British and U.S. dance records.

*Series broadcast over NBC's Blue network, Sundays, 12:30-1:30 p.m. E.S.T.

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