I probably have told the story of how my wife, as a 17 year old student
applying for admission to the Guildhall School of Music in the mid-60s,
was asked to improvise something at the piano "in the style of Mahler".
I'd be quite interested to know how people here might approach that task in
the here-and-now: what, in piano terms, constitutes Mahler's style? Back
then, of course, she was vaguely aware of Mahler as someone who wrote big
unapproachable orchestral pieces but she had probably never heard a note of
him.  Anyhow, whatever she did - and she was so panicked by the task that
she's never been able to remember anything about what she played - it must
have been good enough, because they let her in.

In answer to the question about "typical" Mahler, I'll avoid the perhaps
obvious 1st and 5th that others have picked.  I'm tempted to go for the
2nd - it contains just about all the essential elements (including vocal /
choral, both missing from the leading contenders) and it is astonishingly
successful at introducing people to a lifelong love of Mahler, which
suggests that it may somehow encapsulate much about what makes him such
an important figure.  I considered No.6 for a while but my final choice is
the third symphony, and most particularly the final movement.  It's hard to
define why - it just seems to be the complete Mahlerian experience, insofar
as any one work can be.

I'm inclined to look at nearly everything Mahler wrote as forming one
gigantic mega-symphony in eleven movements (9 completed symphonies, Das
Lied von der Erde, and the 10th symphony as it would, as far as we can
know, have been) interspersed by interludes (the orchestral songs and
song-cycles).  From that perspective, you can't pick one as "typical"
any more than you could choose one movement fro many symphony and call
it representative of the whole piece.  The parts form the whole, they do
not contain it.

Ian Crisp
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