Vienna, Prague & the Leipzig Mahler Festival

Online tour resources.

Thank you for choosing Limelight Arts Travel. The materials on this page help you to get the most from your tour. Tour leaders Clive Paget and Robert Veel have selected recordings and written articles both on Mahler and the sites we visit on tour. Click on the links below to access the materials. This page is constantly updated, including on tour, so keep checking for new materials.

Summary

  1. A glimpse at the Capri by Fraser suites in Leipzig

  2. Reading pack, and a selection of written articles on Mahler and his music

  3. Extracts of Mahler symphonies and songs to listen to

  4. Podcast. Embrace everything: the world of Gustav Mahler, series 1, episode 1

  5. Clive Paget interviews Osmo Vänskä on Mahler’s 10th.

  6. Articles and videos on sites we visit on tour.

Daily schedule

To view a copy of the daily schedule, click on the button. If you have not been mailed a copy of the schedule, you will be given a copy on the first day of the tour.

A glimpse at the Capri By Fraser Suites IN Leipzig

For our long stay in Leipzig we’re at the Capri by Fraser suites. While the suites are decidedly ‘Teutonic functional’ rather than ‘luxurious’, they’ve got lots of handy features. Tour leader Robert Veel made this video during an inspection trip in 2022.

The Rise of the Habsburgs

Online lecture.

Gustav Mahler lived in Vienna at the very end of the rule of the Habsburg dynasty. In this lecture from his Footsteps Vienna course, Limelight Arts Travel’s Dr Nick Gordon traces the rise of the dynasty from Charlemagne to the creation of Vienna as the imperial capital. Nick uses the objects in the Imperial Treasury in the Hofburg Palace to illustrate his lecture.

A selection of articles about Mahler and his music

Listening to Mahler’s music, and the comments made by your tour leaders, you may be stimulated to read in greater depth. To read the article, open the + sign and click on the link.

  • Here is a link to the package of articles on Mahler we sent you earlier. Many of the articles were written by tour leader Clive Paget and most were published in Limelight. Click to read.

  • This 50-page chapter from Robert Philip’s The Classical Music Lover's Companion to Orchestral Music (Yale University Press, 2018), gives a summary of each symphony, The Song of the Earth and other works. Helpfully, the article contains the text of all the sung words in his symphonies in German and English. Click to read.

  • Mahler’s Jewish heritage and the explicitly spiritual (if not Christian) issues he explores in his music have long been explored and debated. Cecil Bloom’s 2001 article will get you thinking. Click to read.

  • Paris-based Nadia Boulanger was one of the most influential composition teachers of the 20th century. This article explore her initial embrace of Mahler’s music and later distancing. It offers insight into the way the reception of Mahler’s music changes over the years. Click to read.

  • In his lifetime Mahler was best known as a conductor who had an electrifying effect on the staid world of Viennese musical life. This article explores his career at the Wiener Hofopera. Click to read.

  • A fascinating descrition of how Mahler looked, dressed and walked from a letter written in 1923 by his friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner. From the mahler.org website. Click to read.

Extracts of Mahler Symphonies and songs

Tour leader Clive Paget has selected a range of performances of single movements from Mahler symphonies available on YouTube. Use them to prepare for performances and to complement your reading. Clive’s selections includes some of the very greatest historic performances and some of the conductors and orchestras we hear on tour.

Mahler the conductor caricature

  • A historic recording with Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. Click to listen.

  • Klaus Tennstedt was a legendary Mahler interpreter of the 1980s and 1990s. Click to listen.

  • Listen to the Budapest Festival Orchestra and their inspiring conductor, Iven Fischer. We’re lucky enough to hear this orchestra twice on tour. Click to listen.

  • We’re lucky enough to be hearing Semyon Bychkov lead the Czech Philharmonic in Symphony No 6. Here he is in the much gentler Symphony No 4. Click to listen.

  • A historic recording with Leonard Bernstein a powerful champion of Mahler’s music in the 1970s and 80s. Click to listen.

  • Adam Fischer, whom we hear on tour, conducts the Dusseldorf Symphony. Click to listen.

  • The evocative ‘nachtmusik’ movement. We hear the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Bernard Haitink, both well regarded Mahler interpreters. Click to listen.

  • From the first section of Mahler’s vast choral symphony, we hear the choir sing ‘Gloria sit Patri Domino’. Clive has selected another famous Mahler pairing, Sir Geog Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Click to listen.

  • Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra play the moving opening movement of Mahler’s last completed symphony. Click to listen.

  • A performing edition of Mahler’s incomplete final symphony was prepared by British musicologist Deryck Cooke. Clive has selected Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra. Clive’s interview with the conductor is also on this page. Click to listen.

  • Sung by British contralto Kathleen Ferrier. Ferrier performed often with Bruno Walter, who knew Mahler. Click to listen.

  • Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau sings this early song from Mahler’s song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Mahler’s songs reappear as melodies in many of his symphonies. Click to listen.

  • Fromk Mahler’s cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Baritone Thomas Quasthoff with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Click to listen.

  • Also from Das Knaben Wunderhorn. In this performance, Anne Sofie von Otter sings with the Berlin Philharmonic. Click to listen.

Podcast: The world of Gustav Mahler, Season 1, Episode 1

The outstanding, but as yet incomplete, podcast series was begun during the Covid-19 pandemic. Season 1 focuses on Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major (1888), taking listeners back to the work’s origins in the street songs, folk tunes, and bugle calls of Mahler’s childhood. Each of the four episodes is devoted to a movement of the symphony. It’s a thought provoking introduction to Mahler’s music.

clive paget interviews osmo Vänskä on Mahler’s 10th

Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra were awarded Limelight’s recording of the year in 2021 for his interpretation of Mahler’s 10th symhony. Tour leader Clive Paget asked Vänskä about the work.

articles and videos on sites we visit on tour

In this section you will find a range of articles and videos on some of the cultural sites we visit on the tour.

  • A handy summary of Prague’s attractions, producted by the city’s tourism authority. Click to read.

  • A short guide to sites of interest to music lovers in Leipzig. Click to read.

  • For music lovers, Leipzig is inextricably linked to the life and music of JS Bach. Ignore the jargon-laden first five pages of Martin Petzoldt’s article and read from page 12 onwards for a good account of Bach in Leipzig. Click to read.

  • Naumberg Cathedral, an hour’s journey from Leipzig, is considered a masterpiece of German medieval architecture and is a UNESCO World-Heritate site. Click to read.

  • A short article from The Burlington Magazine on a past exhibition of the sculpture from Naumberg Cathedral. Click to read..

  • On our trip to Dessau we visit this extraordinary piece of landscape architecture, created in the late 18th century under the regency of Duke Leopold III of Anhalt-Dessau. This brief article from the Times Literary Supplement introduces the site. Click to read.

  • Dessau is closely associated with an important movement in European modernism, the Bauhaus. This exhibition review from Art Monthly introduces us to the Bauhaus’s Dessau years. Click to read.

  • Well before the eponymous Republic of the 20th century, Weimar had enjoyed a period in the 18th and 19th century as a leading centre of culture in Germany. This article from History Today summarises this period, which underpins our visit. Click to read.

  • Moritzburg Castle in Halle has a remarkable and unexpected survey of German art. Here is an overview of what you will see. Click to read.

  • This renowned gallery, housing the historic collection of the rulers of Saxony, re-opened recently after an extensive refurbishment. This short YouTube video gives you a glimpse of what is on display. Click to watch.