Monday, November 28, 2011

Keeping Score: Gustav Mahler: Origins and Legacy



The Main Library's Thursday Noon Film series in December will be devoted to the San Francisco Symphony's Keeping Score series. Keeping Score is an ongoing educational classical music series originally broadcast on PBS that features the Symphony's Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. We are very happy to present five of these programs in conjunction with the celebration of the Symphony's Centennial season.

Our video series will kick off with the 2011 film Gustav Mahler: Origins and Legacy. In this program, Michael Tilson Thomas journeys to rural Bohemia to rediscover the inspirations of Gustav Mahler’s music. This two-part, two hour documentary traces the composer’s life through the premiere of his first symphony in 1888 and examines Mahler’s creative growth, from the 1890s to his death in 1911. The documentary is shot on location in the Czech Republic, Austria, New York, and in performances by the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.

Gustav Mahler: Origins and Legacy will screen at noon on Thursday, December 1, 2011 in the Koret Auditorium. All programs at the Library are free and open to the public.


Recent books about Mahler in the San Francisco Public Library collection include:

Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-siècle Vienna by Carl Niekerk (Camden House, 2010).

Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World by Norman Lebrecht (Pantheon Books, 2010).

We also have most of Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony's recordings of Mahler available to borrow. Place any title on hold to have it sent to your neighborhood branch.

When you visit the Main Library don't forget to visit our two Symphony-related exhibits, Music for a City, Music for the World in the Jewett Gallery on the Lower Level and The San Francisco Symphony in the Library’s Collections in the Steve Silver Beach Blanket Babylon Music Center here on the 4th floor.

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