"Behind every great man there is a great woman": and nowhere more so than with ALMA MAHLER. The pianist. The song composer. The most brilliant woman in Vienna - and, “the malevolent muse”, the “crazy widow”. the “brazen hussy”, the “monster”. The epithets that were hurled at her are startling. Perhaps because she was so beautiful - and because every man she met - Klimt, Zemlinsky, Mahler, Kokoschka - all of them fell at her feet...
Alma Schindler was born into an arty, musical high society family in 1879 and hoped to become a composer herself. And then at 22 she married Gustav Mahler and that was the end of that. He literally forbade her to compose. And then he died: and she was reborn here in the States. She arrived in 1938 after an arduous trek through the Pyrenées to escape the Nazis, literally carrying the family jewels. And here she became the fairy godmother to decades of American conductors and composers, Klemperer and Furtwängler and so on, all flocking to seek her advice and approval. She knew Ravel and Stravinsky, she mentored young Bernstein, she managed Mahler’s legacy wisely and used her wealth from the royalties to support young composers. As for Alma herself, she did return to composing after Mahler died and her own songs are so beautiful. Of the original 50 that she wrote, only 17 remain
Presented by composer Joan Tower for International Women’s Month in March, written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
