Young Mahler - encouragement worthwhile?

A charming and previously unpublished reminiscence of an 11-year-old Gustav Mahler (photo above) comes to An Overgrown Path from Elissa Minet Fuchs former ballerina with the Ballet Russe and the Metropolitan Opera. Mrs. Fuchs (see photo below) is the widow of conductor and composer Peter Paul Fuchs who was the subject of two tributes here when he died last year. A reader drew Mrs. Fuchs' attention to my articles and she has very kindly supplied me with material, including previously unpublished photographs, on her husband for a full appreciation to be published here on the first anniversary of his death next week. Among the material was this memory of a young Gustav Mahler.

Peter's grandfather on his mother's side, Alois Rusicka, was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia not far from the Austrian border. He was a law student - pursuing his degree and an amateur musician, a cellist. On one of his visits home, he was approached by a tavern keeper. He was asked to meet the tavern owner's young son, 11 years, and to judge the boy's musical talent to see if encouragement in this field would be worthwhile. Herr Rusicka was absolutely sure that this was a significant talent - the boy's name was Gustav Mahler.

Peter's mother told me that her father never revealed this incident to Mahler even though much later in Vienna the then well known lawyer and the then intendant of the Vienna Opera crossed social paths - at soirées, the Opera, coffee houses.

Also of interest - Peter's theory teacher at the Vienna Academy of Music (graduated with honors in 1935) was Karl Weigl, an assistant to Mahler during his Vienna Opera tenure - and also a composer.

Below is the text of this story together with a photo of Elissa Minet and Peter Paul Fuchs. I would like to thank Mrs. Fuchs in Greensboro, NC and Adrian McDonnell in Paris for making this valuable material available. There also is the possibility (and I stress possibility) of private recordings of Peter Paul Fuchs music being made available for An Overgrown Path radio programme. And just think, someone once said "Classical blogs are spreading but their nutritional value is lower than a bag of crisps. Unlike financial blogs, which yield powerful and profitable secrets, classical web-chat is opinion-rich and info-poor."


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Peter Paul Fuchs - one path ends

Hello Pliable, No sooner than we speak of Weigl and a few of his students than I see this today:

In Wednesday’s (3/28/2007) Greensboro News & Record (NC), Dawn Decwikiel-Kane reports: “Peter Paul Fuchs, longtime conductor of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Greensboro Opera Company, died Monday night after a long illness. Fuchs, 90, died at Friends Home Guilford after a 17-year battle with Alzheimer's disease (follow this link for more on music and Alzheimer's - Pliable). The Vienna-born Fuchs brought his vast musical experience and pleasant temperament to the symphony and opera company from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s. Their leaders praised him Tuesday for his role in sculpting both organizations. ‘His expertise and talents led the orchestra to achieve the professional status and artistic excellence it enjoys today,’ said Dmitry Sitkovetsky, the symphony's current music director. Before arriving in Greensboro, Fuchs conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, directed the opera and orchestra at Louisiana State University and had led the Baton Rouge Symphony. Fuchs served as the Greensboro Symphony's music director from 1975-87, then retired and became its conductor laureate.”

He was a talented man that I was honored to meet once and speak to at length. I still have a score or two of his in my library, though I was unable to convince anyone to perform them at the time. That was no reflection upon his music. Best, John McLaughlin Williams

* Now playing - Bach's Goldberg Variations transcribed for strings by current Greensboro Symphony music director Dmitry Sitkovetsky (below), and played by NES Chamber Orchestra. The sleeve notes of this 1995 Nonesuch CD are by none other than John Adams, and say: 'The opportunity to experience a new view of a familiar work such as the Goldberg Variations should not be grounds for a skeptical raising of critical eyebrows, but rather a cause for celebration. Arranging the Goldberg Variations is risky business, however. One is working here not with a melodic fragment of single song, but rather with one of the summas of Western music, specifically a work which is a compendium of all the principal developments in European keyboard up to and including Bach's time. ... John Cage, in his lecture "Composition as Process," defines form as "the morphology of continuity." The morphology of the Goldberg Variations' continuity is one of a perfectly shaped and harmonious continuity. Symmetry and unpredictability coexist in an environment of impertuable serenity. ' Nice CD as well.

Now read about a year at the symphony.
Photo of Greensboro, NC southern railway station from ePodunk. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk