1 CD - 33CO-1088 - (p) 1986.10
GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)







Symphony No. 5

72' 22"
I. Trauermarsch. In gemessenem Schritt. Streng. Wie ein kondukt [IN:DEX 1-8]
 13' 31"

II. Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz [IN:DEX 1-9] 14' 04"

III. Scherzo. Kräftig, nicht zu schnell [IN:DEX 1-9] 18' 46"

IV. Adagietto. Sehr langsam [IN:DEX 1-4] 11' 34"

V. Rondo-Finale. Allegro [IN:DEX 1-9] 14' 27"





 
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Eliahu INBAL
 





Luogo e data di registrazione
Alte Oper, Frankfurt (Germania) - 23/25 gennaio 1986

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Recording Direction
Yoshiharu Kawaguchi (DENON / Nippon Columbia), Richard Hauck (Hessischer Rndfunk)

Recording Engineer
Peter Willemoës (DENON / Nippon Columbia), Detlev Kittler (Hessischer Rundfunk)

Technology
Yukio Takahashi (DENON / Nippon Columbia)

Editing
Hideki Kukizaki

Edition
Universal Edition AG, Wien

Edizione CD
Denon | 33CO-1088 | (1 CD) | durata 72' 22" | (p) 1986.10 | DDD

Note
Special Thanks to: Brüel & Kjær.
Co-production with Hessischer Rundfunk.













“The fifth symphony marks the beginning of a new Mahler. In the vehement fight between Mahler’s ego and the world takes place for the first time. Certainly this was already the case in Mahler’s previous symphonies, but not with such a verve and consequence: Mahler’s ego has grown stronger. In quite a different way it asserts itself against the modalities and causalities of this world. He does not whine any longer, he does not complain because of self-pity; he wants to assert himself. Complaints only exist as a static statement, a kind of virtue, an element that cannot be hidden, but which is perfectly controlled in a manlike way. It lacks the visionary element. The Fifth is a symphony of realities.” Thus Alma Mahler-Werfel’s comment in a broadcast interview of 1960.
Indeed, Mahler’s situation had changed drastically, when he composed the major part of his symphony in 1902: In November 1901 he had made the acquaintance of the then 20 years old Alma in the circle of his close friends. She was the stepdaughter of the painter and secession member Carl Moll. Her literary and musical knowledge immediately left a strong impression on Mahler and only few weeks after the first meeting the engagement between the director of the court opera and Alma-Mari Schindler was a decided matter. At the end of December the official engagement was announced and was followed by their marriage in February. In addition to this private happiness Mahler also had great success as an artist, when in early summer his third symphony had its first performance. Thus Mahler found himself stronger both in his compositoric self-confidence and his selfesteem. The fifth symphony, with its sketches dating back to the previous year, thus became the musical expression of this development. Not only is its expressive character new, the Fifth also obeys new orders concerning the techniques of composition and instrumentation. This subject was also touched in a book on Mahler, written by Richard Specht in 1913. There he says: “The Fifth marks a new beginning in Mahler’s symphonic style: One feels the strong influence of Bach on Mahler’s life. Out of the orchestral homophony of his early works emerges a strange kind of polyphony and polyrhythm. In his first symphonies Mahler has set up all the themes with their secondary groups in a wide enumeration of logical process; now he presents his themes in temporal succession and puts them one on another spatially. He does not wait for the real ending of one theme and its following motif and their thematical processing in the symphonic development. Already in the presentation of one theme other motifs maintain their existential right not only as melodies, but also as contrapuntal elements.
Mahler’s efforts for this polyphonic idea, his wish to overcome the restriction of pianistic scores can already be seen in the polyphony of the Finale of his third symphony. The Fifth eventually represents his disengagement from the sonority of the piano: “The voices themselves”, explains Mahler during the composition, “are so different that they would normally require excellent soloists. Because of my knowledge of orchestra and instruments I simply wrote the most unusual passages.” Nevertheless the balance of sound in this new polyphonic technique brought about some difficulties for Mahler in the beginning. Alma Mahler reports that her husband reduced the percussions to an immense extent and almost entirely cut the score for the small drum after the rehearsals for the first night in Cologne. Even though he still had reservations concerning the transparency of the score. In a short notice his musical intimate Bruno Walter put down: “Because of a very special reason this first night has remained in my memory very lively: It was the first, and I think the last time, that a work by Mahler conducted by himself left me dissatisfied. The instrumentation did not bring out the complicated contrapuntal movements of the voices and afterwards Mahler complained to me that obviously he will never be able to achieve the perfect orchestration. Actually, this led to the thoroughest re-writing of the instrumentation that he has ever felt inclined to do.”
Mahler’s Fifth is “musique pure”, absolute music in its purest sense: there is no programme or literary text that could form the basis for this symphony and Mahler has never felt the necessity of giving any clues. Already in the beginning of the compository work on the symphony he said to Guido Adler: “It is now that I begin with my Fifth. And I say that there is no other programme than this: The music is composed without any outer influence. It is in my mind. I seek nothing ... and I do not want to be told that there might have been something different. ‘It’ is constantly moving inside my mind. ‘It’ and nothing else is to take shape. It has to be like this. Nobody shall ask why...!” Mahler formed the score consisting of five movements into three “sections”: The first comprises the opening Funeral March and the second movement “with stormy agitation”.
When the score was about to be published by C.F. Peters, the question of the symphony’s basic tonality arose. In this connection Mahler also discussed the relationship of the first two movements: “According to the disposition of the first two movements - the actual first movement is in second place here - it is very difficult to speak of any basic tonality of the whole symphony, and in order to avoid misunderstanding. I would not really like the symphony to be designated with a main key at all. (The main movement stands in a minor and the Andante, No. l, is written in c-charp minor.)”
The second movement in a minor - Mahler’s tragic tonality - is thus the actual first movement of the symphony. With the Funeral March Mahler however has put a “general lamentation” in front of the “personal elegy”.
“With stormy agitation and greatest vehemence” is the designation of the music in the second movement. Furtwängler called it “the first nihilistic music of the occident”. After a rehearsal with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra he felt so miserable and resigned that he let go of the baton and said: “These strange melodic flows of Mahler make me believe that everything is in vain. I do not know any other music that could bring me into a more pessimistic mood. It devaluates everything that still could look valuable to us in this dreary world.”
After this movement the music of the third movement with its forced gaiety is almost unbearable. With its 819 bars it is a very long Scherzo, which stands in the center of the disposition in the first section. After the first rehearsal with an orchestra Mahler said: “The Scherzo is condemned to be played too fastly by the conductors in fifty years and they will make it sound like a lot of nonsense and the audience - Oh God - what will it say to this chaos, which creates and destroys a new world in every moment. What will the people say to these jungle-sounds, these breathing, glittery and flashing waves? What can a flock of sheep do else but to bleat, when it hears this “brothersphere-competition chant ”. (Concerning the first night, Mahler was right, the critics were “bleating”!)
The forced gaiety of this movement with its yelling and overstressed colours - which, according to Willem Mengelberg, tries in vain to make the suffering forgotten - is confronted with the Adagietto, a sensitive music with a most delicate character. “A music of the spheres” as he called it, for the realization of which he only chose a string orchestra and the harp. The work on the Adagietto was preceded by the vocalisation of a poem by Friedrich Rückert “I am lost for this world”, in which a state of total apathy from reality is described; it ends with the following lines:
I have died from this troubled world
And now I rest in endless peace
Alone in this heaven I live
In my loving, in my song
In this song we can find the atmospheric and motivic sketches for the Adagietto of the fifth symphony; a dream of lonliness, of inner peace and transfiguration, a movement “in abstracto”, detached from the actual situation that is dominant in the preceding parts.
The Rondo as the final movement is played “attacca” after the Adagietto and forms the last part of the third “section”. The lyric and tender atmosphere of the Adagietto is replaced by unthreatened gaiety. Suffering and sorrow are no longer existent in this charming music, eventually these qualities are overcome; and when the theme from the Adagietto appears in this movement, it has lost its sensitive character, it sounds more powerful and strengthened and it maintains its self-confidence. The ending apotheosis of the Finale works up this gaiety to an almost frightening extent of high spirits.
With the Fifth a new phase in Mahler’s symphonic work begins: It marks the beginning of the “middle period” Mahler. And yet it maintains the sort of continuity, which is already apparent in his first symphonies. Mahler has never broken the bonds with his ealier works. The fanfare of the trumpet of the Funeral March, the sensitive and intelligent instrumentation of which leads to a real “spatial extension of sound” and evokes the feeling of departure, has already been used in the fourth symphony by Mahler. He also uses compositoric material in the Fifth that has earlier been composed in an orchestra song, whereas it was aspects of context and psychology of development in the first four symphonies, it is now the musical context that maintains the continuity.
Andreas Maul