Celebrating Mahler: Western's connection to the great composer plus upcoming concerts and exhibition

Gustav Mahler-Alfred Rosé Collection, North America’s largest anthology of Mahler memorabilia, is a chronicle of European genius and tragedy.

In the film Tár, up for six Academy Awards in 2023, Cate Blanchett stars as a conductor on the brink of personal and professional demise as she prepares to record a live performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphonie No. 5.

The sweeping work, regarded as one of Mahler’s greatest achievements, plays a key role in the drama. It’s also attracted a new mass of Mahler fans. Within weeks of the film’s release last October, streams of the symphony on Apple Music were up 50 per cent from the previous month.

This is not the first time Hollywood has precipitated a ‘Mahler moment’. The Austrian conductor-composer’s work was also featured in the 1971 film Death in Venice, as well as several television shows, from Fargo to The Simpsons.

Blanchett’s character, Lydia Tár, is the fictional protégé of Leonard Bernstein, the subject of the upcoming Netflix movie Maestro, starring Bradley Cooper. Bernstein, also a conductor-composer, felt an affinity to Mahler and is credited for creating a 20^th century resurgence of interest in the latter’s music.

When Bernstein brought the New York Philharmonic to Centennial Hall in London, Ont. in 1967, he conducted Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. He also took in the Gustav Mahler-Alfred Rosé Collection, now housed at Western Libraries.