Gustav Mahler dirigiert Antonín Dvořák in Wien: ein Beitrag zur frühen Dvořák-Rezeption

Gustav Mahler led the Vienna Philharmonic concerts during the three seasons, 1898/99, 1899/00, and 1900/01. During these years, three premieres of Antonín Dvofiák’s works took place. The premieres were received quite differently. Whilst the well-known Viennese music critic, Eduard Hanslick, wrote about them with high praise in the “Neue Freie Presse”, there were also negative comments in other newspapers. The contradictory views can be explained in two ways. The first is the strict non-acceptance of Dvořák and Mahler by the German-national and anti-semitic press, that rejected both the programmes and the popular (“Czech”) music. The second is a more aesthetic one. On the one hand, there were many people (among them Hanslick) who could not accept the “horrible” programmes of Dvořák’s symphonic poems. On the other hand, it seemed to be almost impossible to associate a well known composer who had been considered a close adherent to Brahms with the “New German School” of programme music.