Reimagining Mahler: A Festival of Immersion, Interpretation, and Impact | An Interview with Ethan Hecht
Colorado MahlerFest’s mission is to celebrate the legacy of composer Gustav Mahler through an annual festival featuring all of Mahler’s musical output as well as contextual, cultural, and educational events.
Colorado MahlerFest’s vision is to be a recognized leader in performing and interpreting Mahler’s works and to share world-class performance, educational, and cultural events that attract diverse audiences from Colorado and beyond.
Ethan Hecht currently serves as Colorado MahlerFest’s Executive Director
Why Mahler? His music tends to polarize listeners—people either love it or don’t connect with it, with little middle ground. What inspired building an organization and program around such a divisive composer?
Well, I take issue with the question to begin with, I’d argue that today, just as many people dislike other composers as they do Mahler.
Music this complex and intricate sometimes doesn't effectively translate in a recording, especially an MP3 where you just can't hear the highs and lows that Mahler's music explores. It certainly wasn't created to be listened to in the car or through earbuds but to be heard live. That's not to say it can't be enjoyed at home, but I don't think a recording will grab a skeptic the way a good live performance will.
When we started in 1988, Mahler was still relatively obscure. Part of our original purpose was to give audiences and musicians a chance to hear and perform Mahler's music live on the front range. We consider that part of our original mission. Today, most professional orchestras—even regional ones in Colorado—perform a Mahler symphony every couple of years, if not annually. Many local orchestras end their seasons with Mahler, and those concerts are well attended. That aspect of our founding purpose has been fulfilled.
With the current iteration of our festival, we have several goals. We still believe too many people have not experienced a great live performance of Mahler’s music, so one aim remains introducing new audiences to it. But we also make a point of doing things most orchestras can’t or won’t. If Mahler calls for an unusual instrument, we do our best to get it.
Another important part of the festival is training. Our principal players are top-tier, world-class professionals, while the rest of the orchestra includes many young musicians—some at the beginning of their careers, others still in school. We give these aspiring artists the chance to learn Mahler from seasoned professionals, under the baton of a conductor whom John Quinn of MusicWeb International has described as possessing “very impressive Mahlerian credentials.” This, combined with our attention to detail in honoring Mahler’s intentions, helps cultivate a new generation of musicians prepared to carry on the tradition.
A major component of the festival now is placing Mahler in context. Our five-day festival offers an immersive experience of concerts and events, all carefully curated to deepen understanding and appreciation of Mahler’s work. We include social gatherings, a free concert, a free symposium, educational events, and several performances, culminating this season in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. We program works that set the stage for Mahler—pieces that preceded the symphony, explored similar themes, or came from composers following in his footsteps. Whether you’re new to Mahler or a longtime admirer, you’ll leave with a richer understanding of his music.
Photo Credit: Glenn Ross
How does MahlerFest stay fresh? Given the subject matter - how do you program to keep things interesting for fans?
It’s new every year. Yes, the final concert always focuses on one of Mahler’s nine—or eleven—symphonies, depending on how you count them. But there’s a huge variety of interpretations of each piece, and an almost endless range of works we can program around it to provide context.
One year, for example, we presented a concert of film music to highlight Mahler’s influence on the generation of composers who came after him—many of whom ended up in Hollywood. Last year, we offered a performance imagining what Jimi Hendrix might have sounded like playing Mahler, since we know he was a fan of Mahler’s music and there are intriguing similarities in their compositional approaches.
This year, we’re exploring a theme of suppressed composers. We begin with an opera written in the Theresienstadt ghetto by a composer who ultimately perished at Auschwitz. That piece, in turn, connects to a journalist and author who created a graphic novel based on the opera. So, we’ll also feature a display of graphic novels inspired by operas.
What’s special about this year? What might appeal to diehards fans, and what might be intriguing for newcomers?
Mahler’s Sixth is for the die-hard fans. What order are we doing the middle movements in? How many hammer strikes will there be, and what will our Hammerschlag sound like? We’re also performing Totenfeier, Mahler’s original version of the first movement of his Second Symphony.
Our free symposium—which is open to everyone and absolutely accessible for new audience members—is an opportunity to hear from leading Mahler scholars and explore new research related to Mahler, as well as the other composers and works featured in this year’s program.
For newcomers, I truly believe they’ll fall in love with the Mahler. But the opening night opera is something especially powerful—and incredibly timely, given what our country is navigating right now. Viktor Ullmann, who was murdered at Auschwitz, imagined what would happen if Death became fed up with war and went on strike, refusing to kill. It’s a thinly veiled critique of Hitler.
The opera’s cast will also perform a free concert at the Boulder Public Library featuring songs by a range of composers, all tied to this year’s festival theme, in a program titled Songs of Protest and Defiance. Continuing the WWII thread, we’ll also perform a work commemorating a Czech town destroyed by Hitler. The program further includes a trumpet concerto centered on a strategic WWI battle, and a piano concerto by a Black American composer inspired by the Great Dismal Swamp—a perilous refuge where first Native Americans and later enslaved people sought freedom.
Something else intriguing for newcomers is our double-header concert on Friday night at the Roots Music Project, a nonprofit music incubator venue that's basically a club setting. On Friday, May 16 we start with a traditional chamber music concert - string sextets, brass quintets, and a cello solo performed by some of our amazing principal musicians. We'll take a short break, complete with pizza, while we reset the stage. At 9pm, we restart with the Jones/Butterfield duo, a group that performs music informed by a collective study of roots, jazz, rock, and classical practices, as well as various world music traditions - think mandolin and bass playing acoustic American roots music.
But perhaps what newcomers will enjoy most is the sense of community that forms around the festival. We host numerous social events to give audience members a chance to get to know each other, as well as connect with our artists and symposium speakers. Open dinners, receptions, and rehearsals all create opportunities for meaningful interaction. One of our former board members even moved to Colorado to be part of the festival after falling in love with the late-night music discussions he shared with fellow attendees.
How might people prepare if it’s their first time? Can you pick and choose or do you need to attend the whole week of performances to truly appreciate the program?
I think you’ll enjoy anything you come to. It’s a bit like the old TV show philosophy that governed the Love Boat, you can tune in to any individual segment and get something really enjoyable. But I do think that the more you attend, the more it all compounds. The opening opera is certainly an enjoyable piece on it’s own, for example. But when you put it in context of the other songs of protest the next day, a movie about the composer introduced by one of the singers who is an expert in suppressed composers, a guided hike with a Mahler scholar who talks about Mahler’s love of nature, and a presentation by the soloist playing the piano concerto, or a dinner where you can chat with other music lovers about the performance the night before, and hear Kenneth Woods talk at a pre-concert discussion about how all of that ties into his interpretation of Mahler’s Sixth – it all adds up to a more meaningful experience. I don’t know anyone who attends everything, including our board and conductor, there’s just too much going on. But the more you can attend the more it will all come together as one presentation over five days rather than individual events.
Photo Credit: Mark Bobb
Anything else you want us to know?
We have a large catalog of HD recordings available on our YouTube channel, and we've recently begun releasing our recordings on major streaming platforms. Our albums have received outstanding international reviews:
"The Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra punches appreciably above its weight in music which should never fall prey to wanton virtuosity…
There have been too many superfluous Mahler cycles, but this traversal is shaping up as one of the most worthwhile."
— Richard Whitehouse, Arcana.FM, “On Record – MahlerFest XXXVI” (2024-07-19)
"A wonderful and compelling interpretation…
Woods has a clear vision of Mahler’s great symphonic structures that he manages to communicate to the musicians, who in turn demand the listener’s attention throughout the long span. There is no slack in intensity anywhere…
This is an interpretation to be held in high regard."
— Guy Rickards, Klassikmusikk.com, “Musgrave and Mahler” (2024-11-28)
"This performance led by Kenneth Woods is gripping, and the orchestra plays the piece incisively and with great virtuosity…
The orchestra is very fine indeed; not only is the playing exciting, but countless little nuances are observed—hugely to the music’s benefit."
— John Quinn, MusicWeb International, “Mahler: Symphony No. 2” (2024-08-15)