Mahler
Mahler is big. Real big. (HUUUUGE, if you live in upstate NY and get to enjoy all those Fucillo car adverts). He famously — and way overquotedly — said that:
A symphony should be like the world. It must embrace everything.
And my oh my, his symphonies have a heck of lot of stuff packed into them.
His musical style is pretty much Romantic, with little hints of the weird orchestrations and tonalities that the 20th century dudes went kind of crazy with. He is fond of percussion, and sneaks little sarcastic bits into his music now and then. Almost everything varies across his music, the tempos (really fast to really slow) , the orchestration (one or two instruments playing, to every instrument invented playing), the dynamics (really quiet to ridiculously loud).
But in general it is large, well-paced, epic stuff.
I’ve always sort of had trouble really getting into him, despite people emphasizing the similarities to my favorite composer, Shostakovich. It’s definitely not the kind of thing a lot of people will get straight away, even for classical music. I am just starting to really get into him after a couple of years. Of course, your mileage will almost certainly vary.
Here’s the hugely grand start of the 6th symphony. I love the wind down and descent into the drums starting at 1:45ish:
And here’s Mahler in a more sarcastic, playful mood, from the second movement of the ninth symphony:
