Dutch festival reaffirms that Gustav Mahler lives on as an artist of our time

AMSTERDAM — There have been only three festivals devoted entirely to the music of Gustav Mahler in the history of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The first was in 1920. The second in 1995. The third? Well, that has been more than a little complicated. Despite frustrating delays, it evolved with a fascinating role for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

One can understand why the Concertgebouw wanted to do something big for the 2020 centennial of that first 1920 Mahler festival. Amsterdam’s orchestra and its conductor at the time, Willem Mengelberg, had promoted every one of Mahler’s symphonic works during the composer’s lifetime. The reputations of the composer and this city are intertwined. But when COVID-19 became a concern, the centennial celebration was postponed until 2021. That was just the beginning of a run of bad luck: The 2021 festival was also canceled as the epidemic continued to rage.  

Finally, it all came together in Amsterdam, as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra participated in Mahler Festival 2025 with four other major orchestras May 8-18. These distinctly heady 10 days turned out to be quite the occasion. They must have been especially rewarding for Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, who will assume the role of chief conductor at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2027 — as he begins his tenure as Zell Music Director of the CSO.  

Thus the 2025 festival organizers were blessed not only with beautiful weather, but also with all parties actually assembled, epidemic-free, at last. Along with the CSO and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the other participating ensembles were the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Tokyo NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. 

The names of the festival’s conductors were likely to be familiar to Chicago music lovers: Jaap van Zweden with the CSO, Iván Fischer with Budapest, Fabio Luisi with the NHK, both Kirill Petrenko and Sakari Oramo with the Berlin Philharmonic and Mäkelä with the Royal Concertgebouw. Not a single orchestra had a seating arrangement like any other. The 10-day festival brought fans worldwide to fill the concert hall to the brim.  

Those without tickets (and there were legions) simply spread out for live simulcasts along the neighboring Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s largest green space, an urban oasis filled with ponds, paths and the festival’s Mahler Pavilion. 

As for being in the Concertgebouw’s great hall itself, the experience is like no other. There is not an inch within the hall where a seat can be added. On either side of the organ pipes that dominate the stage’s back wall are stairways for the performers to access the stage area. Next to the stairs are seats for a chorus, if one is needed. Otherwise, these seats are used by patrons, who may find themselves directly above the timpani or brass. No nook or cranny is left without a purpose; one of those onstage rows, at the top, flush against an organ pipe, consists of a single seat. 

That seat is not the only perch that offers a splendid view of the audience itself. The side balconies consist of three rows of seats that face straight across the hall. That upstairs sound is magnificent, with a resonating vibration coming off the stage that is so strong one can feel it. At times I felt as if I were listening from inside a cello.

History is elsewhere literally written in a double row of plaques inscribed with the names of composers of previous generations. Some are ones that anyone would list: Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, but then there is one to stumble over — Röntgen? The physicist who figured out X-rays? Not that one, as it turns out. Rather the prolific composer who was friendly with Brahms.  

Fascinating as well, for her lively presence, was Marina Mahler, granddaughter of Gustav, who attended several events and presented a special award to John Warner, conductor of the New European Ensemble, for his own chamber arrangement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, which is as spare as it is intimate, brilliantly colored and full of surprise. It’s impossible not to think of this delightful arrangement as having anything but a long life in the nooks and crannies of chamber music, as performed here by its youngest and best. 

But the main focus of the 2025 Mahler Festival remained the big symphonies and the impressive lineup of five orchestras that underscored the composer’s modern vision, his capacity for irony, extended techniques and brutal contrasts, at times insistent and painful, often quite unsettling. They were a grandiose reminder that Mahler endures as a composer for our time.