Luogo e data di registrazione		Herkules-Saal, München (Germania) - aprile 1968
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Executive Producer		Otto Gerdes
	Recording Producer		Hans Weber
	Balance Engineer		Heinz Wildhagen
	Prima Edizione LP		Deutsche Grammophon - 139 339 - (1 LP) - durata 51' 50" - (p) 1968 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		Deutsche Grammophon - 429 042-2 - (10 CD's - 5°) - (c) 1989 - ADD
	Note		Illustration auf der Plattentaschenvorderseite: "Obsgarten mit Rosen", Gemälde (Ausschnitt) von Gustav Klimt, Privatbesitz

Close though the Third and Fourth Symphonies are to one another, both musically and in content, a signifcant evolution of the composer lay between them. A year after the completion of the Third Symphony Mahler was appointed to Vienna, as musical director of the Court Opera. He saw the appointment as a most impressive recognition of his aims and achievements as an interpretative musician, and in addition he felt confirmed in his calling as a composer. His consciousness of matured artistic and creative powers filled him with inner joy. In this agreable state of peace within himself he wrote his Fourth Symphony. By comparison with the Third Symphony, the Fourth sounds almost like chamber music. The themes, too, take on almost chamber music forms. The principal theme itself suggests the character of a pre-romantic sonata subject; it has no dynamic power or phatos. Possibly the uncommon charm of this Symphony's opening lies in the fact that the composer leaves open the question whether he is in earnest or joking, whether his play with musical figures represents reality or illusion. Again the lyrical theme which brings its cantabile character so wilfully to the fore is in a similar sense enigmatic, as though it really wanted not to give expression, but to play at expressing. The same is true of all the secondary and subsidiary subjects. All move or bustle along with the same trimness and poise of manner which may be either genuine or assumed. From the viewpoint of technical construction this movement reveals the hand of a master, a highly skilled craftsman. Behind it we sense his enjoyment in assembling his elaborate toy and setting it in motion, its figures interweaving in apparent confusion, yet in fact so well controlled that at the end they are once again standing in good order. The second movement, the Scherzo, takes its subject - death strikes up a tune - none too seriously. Certainly this is a weird, fantastic pieces, but its portrayal of death in less macabre than grotesque, less sinister than parodistic. Mahler instructed that the strings of the solo violin on which these tunes are played should be tuned a tone higher than usual. He thus created a uniquely shrill, pinched tone, which sounds not only uncommon but unreal. With the slow mouvement there begins the ascent to higher regions. Not really ascent, but elevation. We do not climb, but are raised up. However, in order to prevent the listener from becoming a little too serious and solemn the composer inserts some unquestionably cheerful variations, creates an unexpectedly agreable atmosphere; the theme is presented in the garb of folksong, then as a decorous, light-footed Allegretto, and finally, in a broad crescendo, as a whirling Allegro. After this outburst of gaiety a single stroke re-established the mood of the opening. At the end of the first and second movements we could ask the question whether the composer was in earnest, or whether he was merely playing with the charming ideas and figures he had conjured up. In the fourth movement, and probably in the third as well, there is no place for such questions. Every note shows clearly that Mahler was completely sincere in his concept of the innocence of childhood expressed in  this music. Heinrich Kralik