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Jan 4, 2015 · Some peculiarities are the funeral march that opens the piece and the Adagietto for harp and strings that contrasts with the complex orchestration of the other movements. The performance of the work lasts around 70 minutes. Mahler wrote his Fifth Symphony during the summers of 1901 and 1902.
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- Part II
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Movement 1: Trauermarsch.
A solo trumpet intones a fanfare, likely based on the Austro-Hungarian army’s “Generalmarsch.” The orchestra answers with a huge A-major chord, then quickly shifts to the minor, sputtering out figures based on the triplets heard in the trumpet’s fanfare (and echoing Beethoven’s motive from his fifth symphony). At 1’19”, first violins and cellos introduce an elegiac theme, accompanied by the bass line’s plodding march rhythm. The trumpet interjects with another fanfare, accompanied by horns, l...
Movement 2: Stürmisch bewegt, mit grösster Vehemenz
As the tempo marking indicates, the opening is ferocious, woodwinds shrieking over the strings playing triple-forte, violins told to play “as vehement as possible!” The fury subsides, making room for a secondary melody played by cellos, a variation of the melodic material from the Trio 2 of the previous movement. The original tempo and mood return at 3’42”, subsiding soon after so the cellos can begin a fragile but heart-breaking lament (4’29”). This unexpected stillness is disturbed by horns...
Movement 3: Scherzo
This was the first movement composed, and in a conversation with Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Mahler described it “kneaded through and through till not a grain of the mixture remains unmixed and unchanged. Every note is charged with life and the whole things whirls around in a giddy dance.” At 819 bars, it is Mahler’s longest scherzo. The opening horn fanfare uses the same three-note striving figure heard in the opening of previous movement, but the mood could not be more different. This dance musi...
Movement 4: Adagietto
This gorgeous ‘songwithout words’, with its simple ABA structure stands in stark contrast to the complexity heard in the other movements. Wilhelm Mengelberg said that Mahler sent this music to Alma as a declaration of love. She immediately understood and responded asking him to quickly come to her and they were engaged soon after. Mengelberg’s conducting score even has a love poem written over the first violin melody; whether the words originated with Mahler or Mengelberg is unclear. Two pass...
Movement 5: Rondo – Finale
The solo horn calls us to attention, answered by the bassoon, which quotes another song, “Lob des hohen Verstandes,” which described a song contest between a nightingale and a cuckoo, judged by a donkey. (Perhaps this is a sarcastic reference to Mahler’s critics?) The various instruments calling to one another suggests the nature music heard in the composer’s first symphony – but it also presents the thematic materials from which Mahler will build this movement. A fugal passage beings at 1’22...
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra & Leonard Bernstein, conductor; DG 4776334
The Viennese is on superb form, the chemistry between orchestra and conductor particularly palpable. Bernstein’s interpretation is slower than his earlier recording with the New York Philharmonic and his interpretive points at times lack subtlety. Nevertheless, there is an intensity to this reading that sweeps all before it. Bernstein convinces the Vienna Philharmonic to play with a ferocity that at times crosses into harsh ugliness, which makes the victorious coda more emotionally convincing...
Berliner Philharmoniker & Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 4793204
Abbado’s reading has fire and finesse, brilliance and precision, in equal measure. He also has the full measure of the music’s emotional trajectory, bringing us from the dark pessimism of the funeral march to the final movement’s joyful elation. The Berliners offer stunning technical security, the brass in particular covering themselves in glory.
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Boulez
Boulez’s Mahler performances are admired by some, reviled in others. His reading of the fifth is not a hyper-emotional (for that, turn to Bernstein and Barshai). But the Viennese orchestra plays with perhaps even greater virtuosity here than in Bernstein’s earlier recording, and Boulez ensures we hear every strand of Mahler’s score, allowing us to appreciate the full brilliance of Mahler’s writing. And despite a slower than expected tempo, the Adagietto’s understated delicateness is deeply to...
The Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler was composed in 1901 and 1902, mostly during the summer months at Mahler's holiday cottage at Maiernigg. Among its most distinctive features are the trumpet solo that opens the work with a rhythmic motif similar to the opening of Ludwig van Beethoven 's Symphony No. 5 , the horn solos in the third movement ...
- 18 October 1904
- 1901–1902 in Maiernigg
- 5
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Jun 8, 2019 · The musical canvas and emotional scope of the work, which lasts nearly 70 minutes, are huge. The symphony is sometimes described as being in the key of C minor since the first movement is in this key (the finale, however, is in D major ). [1]
- 1901-1902 in Maiernigg
- Gustav Mahler
- Gustav Mahler
- Cologne
For the Fifth Symphony is, even more than most of Mahler’s other works, a study in contrasts. The experience of anxiety and mourning encountered in Part I is genuine and is examined unflinchingly; but the joy and vitality of Part III is no less genuine and no less directly faced and explored.
Jan 9, 2019 · Its cosmic drama is evident, but liberated from programmatic meaning. Unlike the earlier symphonies, it defies translation to a piano score. Even in terms of its harmonic scheme, the Fifth Symphony is expansive, beginning in C-sharp minor and concluding in a triumphant D major.
Nov 17, 2013 · Sat 16 Nov 2013 19.06 EST. M ahler's Fifth Symphony (1902), sometimes compared with Beethoven's own of that number, begins with a sombre roar of fate and ends in triumph.
