Newsletter no 21: Concert performance of Alma Mahler’s music - Art Sung:Edith Sitwell at York Late Music
Dear friends,
When I first embarked on my very first Art Sung several years ago, most musicians, including myself, were unaware that Alma Mahler, (née Schindler) the wife of composer Gustav Mahler, had also composed music.
At the time I had just bought Alma’s early diaries, recently published, and which covered the years 1898 to 1902 when she was aged nineteen to twenty-three. On the first page of the diary, she writes about being hungover, missing a composition lesson, visiting the Lehmann sisters who were campaigning against vivisection, a conversation about Anti-Semitism and playing passages from Wagner’s opera Die Walküre: this was a vibrant young woman, aware of topical issues and full of passion for the world around her. These were the years leading up to her marriage to Gustav Mahler. After this, she found herself under the spotlight as Mahler’s wife, then as his widow, and thereafter her life and her actions were scrutinised, analysed and judged.
She was considered a muse to several great men of the 20th century: she married composer Gustav Mahler, followed by Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius whilst having an affair with the painter Oskar Kokoschka and finally married writer Frans Werfel with whom she moved to the States. She was seen as a ‘femme fatale’ to many others including Gustav Klimt, with whom she had her first kiss. Composer Alexander van Zemlinsky, who was her first great love, never got over Alma, according to his wife. She was cast as a villain for tampering with Mahler’s letters so as to present herself in a superior light for posterity. I’m not arguing in her favour, but it was never questioned why she felt the need to do so. Then there was her antisemitism despite that fact that she married two Jews: Mahler and then Werfel, whom she helped escape from Nazi Germany. And finally, on a much shallower level, she is remembered as the butt of Tom Lehrer’s rather politically incorrect song (look it up if you haven’t come across it!). 60 years on since her death in 1964, this deeply complex, charismatic, troubling woman finally has some champions (not surprisingly these have been women) who have been willing to engage with her character in a more nuanced and empathetic manner.
In the autumn of 2024, the play, “The Dedication”, by playwright and producer Claire Novello set out to examine Alma’s early life against the atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Vienna, described by writer Stefan Zweig as “sticky, perfumed, sultry, unhealthy”: a society in which women wondered if life might offer them more than becoming mere wives and mothers. Alma dreamed passionately of being a composer and composed over 100 songs, various instrumental works and the beginnings of an opera. Sadly, only 17 songs remain but these are finally taking their rightful place on concert platforms. It is in her music where we truly meet the real Alma.
On Sunday, 17th November, 2024, at Pond Square Chapel in Highgate, I was joined on stage by the original 'Art Sung – Alma Mahler' singers, soprano Alexandra Weaver and baritone Robert Rice, to perform a recital of Alma’s songs as well as music by Gustav Mahler, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner, and Richard Wagner. Linking this was a narration read by the director of The Dedication, Kenneth Michaels and actor, Rebecca Bugeja, who played Alma in the production.
In other news, Art Sung – Edith Sitwell had a very successful year in 2024. After premiering at the London Song Festival last year, 2024 saw us perform at VocalFest24 in New Malden, the Barnes Festival, and at the Buckingham Summer Festival. We ended this year with a very special performance in York as part of the York Late Music series.
I first met composer Hayley Jenkins in 2019 when I was at Late York Music performing with baritone Robert Rice (mentioned above). Hayley is part of the impressive team that organise this very forward looking and imaginative festival of new music, and she also has close connections with York St John University. I was very impressed by her work at the time and, when we were planning the music for Art Sung – Edith Sitwell, I commissioned her to set two poems from the “Sitwell Cycle” by American poet Olivia Diamond which she did with great creativity and insight. So, it seems very fitting that her songs, “Be a strange bird in a tame pond” and “Edith Regina” will finally be performed on her home turf. Equally special is that a performance celebrating the life and work of Edith Sitwell will take place in Yorkshire for despite her glamorous and notorious image on the world scene, Dame Edith Sitwell began life in Scarborough, Yorkshire.
The performance at Late York Music was on Saturday 7th December, which nearly coincided with the death of Edith Sitwell 60 years prior on 9th December 1964.
Incidentally, Alma Mahler died two days later, on 11th December 1964.