This article appeared in the Oct. 9, 2003 Jewish Advocate.

Benjamin Zander’s BSO to perform full season of Gustav Mahler

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

For twenty-four seasons, the repertorial span of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, while aptly encompassing a wide variety of musical works, has favored the late Romantic and early Twentieth Century. This 25^th anniversary year, the ensemble, which comprises 85 players (including the Advocate’s Sylvia Rothchild on cello), will be performing an all-Mahler season.

It’s a fitting distinction, as the orchestra was formed in the wake of a seminal, 1978 performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony by the then-Civic Symphony of Boston at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall. On Oct. 3, BSO conductor Benjamin Zander discussed the music of Mahler at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

Born at Kaliste in Bohemia, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), the son of a Jewish peddler, achieved international fame as a conductor and composer, completing nine symphonies and much of a tenth.

Zander, a Cambridge resident, was born in 1939 in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghampshire, England. He began composing at the age of nine; at twelve, his parents took him to a performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. “At the first weird sounds of the sleigh bells, I realized I was stepping into a magical world, which has held me in thrall ever since,” he recalled, noting that when he began conducting Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder in 1974, “the music entered my psyche and began to actually shape the way I experienced my life.”

It was a new language. “It held in a single moment the anguish of loss, the possibility of renewal and the courage that comes from love,” he said of Mahler’s form and boundary-bending structures. “The waltzes, klezmer, popular tunes and band music, brass fanfares and sounds of everyday life pushed me to relinquish what I had learned about high art and compelled me to explore the extremities of experience and be stopped by nothing.”

Orchestra and audience members have been similarly affected. “I had been urging and cajoling the orchestra to be flexible, almost to the breaking point,” Zander said. “From Mahler I learned to coax the players to go beyond the point where their training and decorum told them to hold back, so that we could open those same gates for the listeners.”

Zander, who began learning cello and composition under his father’s guidance, was, at the age of twelve, the youngest member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. He continued cello study at the State Academy and the State Conservatoire in Cologne, Germany, won the English Literature Essay Prize while at University College in London, and taught at the Yhudi Menuhin School for gifted children. Following a Harkness Commonwealth Fellowship, he did graduate work at Brandeis and Harvard, and has remained in Boston ever since. On the Faculty at the New England Conservatory since 1967, he has conducted its Youth Philharmonic Orchestra through twelve international tours, and for the past 18 years, has been the Artistic Director of its program with the Walnut Hill School in Natick. Following seven years of conducting the Civic Symphony Orchestra, the BSO was founded for him.

Zander’s guest conducting spots have included the London and the Israel Philharmonic, where since 2002 he has conducted four performances of Mahler’s Third Symphony, the Bournemouth Symphony, Kuala Lumpur’s Malaysian Philharmonic, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas (in Washington, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo), and the National Youth Orchestra of New Zealand. This season, he will again conduct the Israel Philharmonic, the Scottish and Irish National Orchestras, and debut with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and the Australian Youth Orchestra. Featured in BBC and 60 Minutes profiles, Zander includes a bonus CD with his recordings which explain fundamentals of the music to novice listeners,

Zander has spoken on leadership and the creative process three times as a keynote speaker the World Economic Forum in Davos, as well as the State of the World Forum in San Francisco, a London education conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair, a schoolteachers’ forum in Singapore, and varied international corporations. In 2002, he received the “Caring Citizen of the Humanities" Award by the International Council for Caring Communities at the United Nations.

Zander’s parents emigrated from Berlin in 1937. His father, Dr. Walter Zander, whose mother died in the Holocaust, was a lawyer, musician, economist, scholar of Middle Eastern affairs and an ardent Zionist. In 1944, he was appointed secretary of the British Friends of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he was Governor from 1972 until his death in 1993, and also as a Senior Associate Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. In his 1948 pamphlet, “Is This the Way?,” he stressed the sacrifice of the Palestinians. At the 2000 Davis summit, Benjamin Zander had a rare opportunity to discuss his father’s views when, upon a late arrival for a dinner honoring Nelson Mandela, he sat with nine Arab leaders. “I related my father’s statement that we were asking the ultimate sacrifice of the Arab people – to give up their land – and if we fail to remember this, in every conversation and dealing, we will be doomed to eternal struggle.”

Zander received a card from each one of them and an invitation to stay at their homes. “It wasn’t sheer diplomacy,” he said. “They were extraordinarily and genuinely gracious. It was exactly the point my father was making.

“My father’s pamphlet influenced intellectuals all over the world, including Gandhi,” he added. “But, it failed to move the politicians or the public. The Israelis respected him but could not take his advice. The Arabs, convinced of Zionist injustice, were hardly aware of his efforts.

“I personally have a deep-rooted attachment to the issues in the Middle East,” Zander continued. “I would do virtually anything to ameliorate the situation.” Zander met with Arafat and Shimon Peres in 1999 and 2000 at Davos. “I met with Arafat and the violinist Yehudi Menhuin,” he recalled. “We spoke about the need for reconciliation, and he was completely for it.

“I think he may be one of the more misunderstood people,” Zander maintained. “He was open and warm, and spoke for the need for understanding on all sides.”

Zander also spoke with Mandela about his leadership style, where all voices are able to be heard. “Mandela’s genius was that he didn’t lead from one position or the other, but from the whole symphony,” he said. “I call this ‘sinofonia’.”

Zander has a daughter, Jessica, who is the Business Manager of WGBH’s The World, and two granddaughters from his first marriage to Patricia Zander. He has been married to Rosamund Stone Zander since 1981. His stepdaughter, Alexandra Bageris, is a medical resident at BU; his stepson Evan is a personal trainer in the Cambridge area.

With Rosamund, a leading psychotherapist, he co-authored a best-selling book on leadership and creativity, “The Art of Possibility,” which has been translated into 12 languages. In 2000, at a dinner where Elie Weisel also spoke, he talked with Shimon Peres about the book’s principles of reconciliation, and methods by which to get past animosity and retribution. “Peres was very open to ‘The Art of Possiblity,’” he said.

For more information, email info@benjaminzander.com or visit www.benjaminzander.com. For more information on the upcoming Mahler season, please visit www.Mahlerjourney.com; for information on the Boston Philharmonic, please visit www.bostonphil.org.