Mahler and Måneskin (and Boléro, somehow)
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
I don’t love Mahler. I have tried, multiple times, to fall in love with Mahler the way so many people do so easily, but it is very hard for me to love a man who stuffs approximately three full-length concert programs’ worth of material into a single symphony as if a symphony were a vacuum-sealed space saver bag. I realize this is very rich coming from a person whose writing tendencies fall squarely in the category of “whatever the opposite of ‘concise’ is,” but I must speak my truth!
I don’t loathe Mahler the way I loathe Wagner (both the man and the music). I don’t even dislike Mahler the way I dislike Bruckner, nor do I care to make fun of Mahler the way I will endlessly dunk on Berlioz.
That being said, Mahler symphonies are simply not my jam. The amount of Mahler (approximately the first 30 seconds of the 5th Symphony) in Tár was the perfect amount of Mahler for me. If the human manifestation of a Mahler symphony were to approach me at a party, I would make no eye contact with him and scramble out of there like a spooked fawn before he could launch into conversation.