What is the Mahler Project?

The Mahler Project is a song performance course for singers and pianists aged 30 or older who would like to improve their interpretive, collaborative, and performance skills as part of an intensive course on the songs for voice and piano of Alma Schindler-Mahler and Gustav Mahler.

Led by instructors Kathryn Whitney and Anna Cal, and taught over a series of weekends in April and May 2019, the course is run as a joint project between the Victoria Conservatory of Music and the SongArt Performance Research Group (UK), a research arm of the Institute for Musical Research at the University of London.

Culminating in three concerts on the first two weekends in June, 2019, the project offers singers, pianists, and non-performing auditors the chance to take part in a unique joint performance project exploring the music, poetry, and performance tradition of the songs of two of the finest song composers of the past 150 years.

Following on from our previous courses on the songs of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, we welcome all pianists and singers to participate in our course, whether amateur and professional.

Collaborative Performance

Collaborative work is a key component of the project. The course will teach students about Alma Schindler-Mahler and Gustav Mahler’s song cycles as a works of poetry and music, but it is also designed to go deeper into the music as a reflection of the intimate and convivial performing traditions that support it. The project is thus more than simply a course leading to a performance of an important piece; it also affords participants unprecedented insight into the intimate and intriguing collaborative relationship between pianist and singer that lies at the core of the song repertoire for voice and piano at the end of the nineteenth century.

How does it work?

The Mahler Project achieves this balance between instruction and exploration by placing collaborative performance at the heart of the course.

Our students include performing singers and pianists, understudy singers and pianists, and observers. Each type of student plays an important role in the project, whether as part of a performing pair, as a member of an understudy partnership, or as an engaged audience member and classmate who provides receptive listening and commentary to both the students and instructors throughout the course.

Following this link to read more about the specific course provision for each of the three student categories.

Singer-pianist Duos

Singer-pianist duos are the cornerstone of the project. All performers and understudies will be paired with a number of partners to form singer-pianist duos that will work together to explore the songs within collaborating partnerships.

Song Selections

Each student will work on between two and six songs over the course of the project (more for pianists who request it), exploring these both as individuals in their private sessions, and with their duo partners in both private coachings and group sessions.

Group Sessions

The majority of our work together will take place in group sessions, which are timetabled for Saturday or Sunday afternoons from April to May, 2019. Follow this link to view the provisional timetable of our group classes.

Group sessions include Masterclasses, Workshops and Lectures, and Faculty Open Rehearsals, all of which are attended by performers, understudies, and observers. (See links on the right of this page for more information about individual elements.)

Private Coachings

Singer-pianist duos will take a number of private Duo Coachings with Kathryn Whitney and Anna Cal, where they will work with each instructor separately to explore the intricate and intimate settings of their songs from the perspective of a collaborative pair.

Additionally, each student will attend a number of private Solo Coachings with Kathryn Whitney (singers) or Anna Cal (pianists), at times to be arranged to suit mutual timetables.

Final Performances

The course finishes with three final concerts – two final student concerts and one final faculty concert. The Final Student Concerts will feature a full performance of Alma Schindler-Mahler’s 5 Lieder (5 Songs), plus the Lieder und Gesänge (Songs and Ballads) and the song cycle Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) of Gustav Mahler. Each student will perform between two and four songs as part our two joint performances of the project repertoire.

The Final Faculty Concert, which follows the week after the student concerts, repeats the same program. It is a chance for student to hear their teachers performing the repertoire with which they have become so familiar. It is also a showcase of how collaborative musical instruction is, and highlights how much the instructors have learned from their students while teaching this intensive course.

For further information about each aspect of the course mentioned above, please see the ‘Course Elements’ listings on the right-hand side of this page.