Not Great Men?

I often fall behind a week or two in reading my subscription to The Economist. That’s OK, because I don’t put much stock in being a current events guy. I mostly read The Economist in hopes of finding signs of Great People.

My wife and I have subscribed to The Economist since 1995, when we got back from our year in Hungary. It provides a balanced overview and analysis of world events, developments in science and the arts, and so forth in a way that skirts around the America-centric and marketing-driven tone of Time, Newsweek, and all other publications that have been influenced over the years by the success of USA Today.

I always begin reading The Economist at the back, where they run a featured obituary. I love obits! It’s good to reflect on the lives of great men and women, especially those I may have otherwise never heard about. Death has its benefits after all.

Great People are harder to spot in the world news and politics sections, but they exist. The Finance section makes no sense to me, so I can’t tell if they exist there. I also struggle with Science, but I can spot greatness in that area now and then. Next to the obits, the Books and Arts section of The Economist is the best place for me to keep up with the works of Great People.

Yesterday, while catching up on last week’s issue, I got to the Books and Arts section and read about a music conductor I’d never heard of before, Gilbert Kaplan. I often come back to articles regarding classical music, but this one was entitled “Desparately seeking Mahler.” One of the only classical albums I own and know well is a performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with some short songs following, Sinfonia No. 4 – Lieder und Gesange aus der Jugendzeit. I’m glad I read about this guy before he makes it to the obits page.

Mahler’s second symphony, known as the “Resurrection” for its rousing choral climax and theological theme, is one of the trickiest works in the repertory, a 90- minute epic involving a huge orchestra, chorus, two vocal soloists and an invisible offstage group of brass and percussion that seldom come in on cue. Discussing the purpose of life on earth, its unwieldiness regularly defeats the best efforts of famous maestros. For a rank amateur to accomplish a performance without breaking down in the vast finale was tantamount to a musical revolution. Privately Mr Kaplan now admits that if the musicians had failed to respond to his beat or the music fell apart (as it sometimes does in the best of hands), his fallback plan was to turn around to the audience and announce: “Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served.”

Kaplan made millions as a young man by publishing some financial magazine I’d never heard of and would surely find baffling. In 1965, a friend took him to watch a rehearsal of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor at Carnegie Hall. The next night he attended the concert and had a life-changing reaction. This particular symphony would become his obsession. He took an 18-month break from his business to study the score and learn from famous conductors. In 1982, he actually conducted the symphony, which is supposedly a challenging piece to conduct even for the masters.

As the linked article can better tell you (you may have to register to read The Economist online, but you’ll be happy you do, if only for the obituaries), this dream and driving artistic force has led to Kaplan becoming the world’s expert on this symphony and the honor of conducting the piece tonight (December 8, 2008), at the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, where Mahler himself premiered the piece for US audiences exactly 100 years ago!

This is one cool story, if you ask me. I’m sure you’ve had dreams, Townspeople. If you had the millions in financial publishing to dedicate yourself to any single piece of music – classical, rock, jazz, whatever – what would it be?

(Gilbert Kaplan interview starts about 18:00 into the above clip.)