Luogo e data di registrazione		Alte Oper, Frankfurt (Germania) - 24/27 settembre 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)
	Mixing Engineer		Norio Okada (DENON / Nippon Columbia)
	Technology		Yukio Takahashi (DENON / Nippon Columbia)
	Editing		Genichi Kitami
	Edition		Universal Edition AG, Wien
	Edizione CD		Denon | 60CO-1566-67 | (2 CD's) | durata 44' 48" - 59' 07" | (p) 1987.8 | DDD
	Note		Special Thanks to: Brüel & Kjær. Co-production with Hessischer Rundfunk. Cooperate: Tazuo Nishimura (DENON Elektronik GmbH)

The final artistic triumph in Gustav Mahler’s life was the immensely successful premiere of his Eighth Symphony in Munich, 1910. This was Mahler’s greatest success as a composer, but also his last great triumph as a conductor. Eight months later he died from his heart descase, in his 51st year of age. Two unpublished scores were found in his inheritance: the "Song of the Earth” and the Ninth Symphony, both works of farewell, full of melancholy and sadness, composed in his last years under the shadow of death. Together with the sketches for his Tenth Symphony they form the sombre trilogy of Mahler’s mature style. Mahler retired from the direction of Vienna “Hofoper” in 1907; this was also the year in which he first heard about his heart disease and which brought the death of his elder daughter Maria Anna. The beloved daughter had died from scarlet fever and - according to Alma Maria Mahler’s testimony - Mahler was never able to overcome this stroke of fate and thought of himself as a stranger in the world. Under these circumstances he composed a cycle of seven sad and resignating poems from Hans Bethge’s "Chinese Flute" under the title of “The Song of the Earth” in 1908. This was in fact Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, but Mahler instinctively felt a deep horror of the mysterious and magical number nine. The strange fact that Beethoven, Bruckner and Schubert had all reached the number nine Symphonies in their work and then died, made the number nine to a extremely threatening one in Mahler’s thinking (of course he never believed in rare coincidence). Mahler called his “Song of the Earth” in a subtitle only “Symphony for a Tenor and Alto-voice and Orchcstra”. When he completed his Ninth Symphony one year later (which was in fact his Tenth) he seemed having defeated the power of destiny. The real “Ninth” was in his opinion the “Song of the Earth” and with his “Ninth” he had in fact composed his Tenth Symphony. In this way, he tried to find a confirmation for his superstition. Arnold Schönberg stated that there was only one step from Mahler’s last works, especially from the “Song of the Earth”, to the absolute style of Modern Music. “If Mahler would have lived ten years longer, the musical world would have celebrated him as the first genius of Modern Music, as a outstanding figure in all the musical world of his era”. Indeed, Mahler developed new methods of composing in his last works which lead immediately to the music of Schönberg and his colleagues. There are no melodies in the usual way, only short musical motifs, and the harmonical structure and the counterpoint are only a matter of secondary importance. Everything is ruled by the law of dematerialization. The Ninth Symphony is an interesting example for this tendency. The harmony and the incredibly bold organization of sounds are leading to techniques of the 20th century Atonal Music. The keys are no more used in a traditional sense. They are only used as colours and contrasts regardless of dissonant sounds. The most important factor is not the linear or the vertical thinking, but the creation of a horizontal sound development. Theodor W. Adorno wrote: "Mahler draw conclusions from a fact which has been acknowledged in our time but that was unknown to his generation: the western music and its unity both in form and in style is no more existing. It has become contrary to a way of human living which is not based on an affirmative understanding of human existence." The formal structure of the Ninth Symphony combines two seemingly contradictory styles. He opposes the two very fast and rude middle movements of the Symphony to the slow and expressive, even melancholy first and last movements. The development of the Symphony is emphasized by means of Mahler’s favourite style of “progressive tonality”. Each movement is based on another key: the first movement in D major, the second in C major, the third in a minor and the last not in the joyous D major but in the rather sinister D-flat major which acccntuates the farewell mood at the end. For a long time Mahler’s Ninth has been described as a work of despair, sadness, resignation and farewell. Of course there are several annotations in the sketches which indicate such feelings "O childhood! You are gone! O love! You are scattered!" But the music itself is absolutely contrary to the character of farewell and sadness. The first and the last movements, Andante Comodo and Adagio totally deprived of each sign of affirmation. They are composed in the “characters of decadence” (Adorno). The Ninth is also composed in a spirit of remembrance. And remembrance is reflexion. There are several recollections of motifs and structures in the four movements of the Symphony, quotations from the "Song of the Earth" and even memories of older Mahler music. The final Adagio quotes a fragment from “Urlicht” (Second Symphony) and from the fourth of “Kindertotenlieder” and it is, of course, composed as a counterpart of the final Adagio from Mahler’s Third Symphony. And there are, additional to these recollections, some “memories of Bruckner” and of his characteristic Adagio-style. Alban Berg wrote: “The first movement is the most beautiful one which Mahler has ever written. It expresses a deep love towards the earth, the longing to live in peace and to enjoy the pleasures of nature until death comes. And death comes without stopping. The whole movement is based on the spirit of presentiment of death. It comes again and again. Every worldly dream culminates in this sentiment (and after each soft section there is a mighty, vehement increasing of dynamics and musical structure), especially at the immense moment when the presentiment of death becomes certainty, when death announces himself in the middle of deepest, most painful joy of living with extreme power. Then the horrible viola - and violin - solos and the knightly sounds: death in an armour. There is no possible fighting against death. I think there is a spirit of resignation in the last bars of the first movement. Always with respect to eternity and a brighter world to come... And then, for the last time, Mahler turns again to see the world.” The two middle movements are roughly tempered, in harmonical and tonal respect in the style of counterpoint. The second movement, Tempo of a moderate Laendler Clumsy and very stout (Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb), combines two Laendler, extremely different in speed and character and a waltz. The spirit of this movement is without any model, even in Mahler’s own works. It is a first exemplary case of musical assembling, anticipating Stravinsky, but without any sign of parody. The way of arranging and recomposing the quasi-quoted-themes really anticipates Stravinsky`s "Petrushka" technique. Mahler's way of musical assembling is not parodistic at all, it resembles a dance of death Adorno wrote: “The Rondo-Burleske, a name which announces that this movement intends to mock the course of thc world, shows that all laughter will die. It is Mahler’s one and only “virtuoso piece”, both in the musical structure and in the orchestra technique, far from “solid” music, even in the fugato sections. They are hard to find, because the composer has hidden these sections and arranged them in a way (though using the principle of Double Fugue) that they only concentrate the musical structure”. Mahler subtitled the movement “Dedicated to my brothers in Apollo" (but only for private use). The score bears the remark “very stubborn”. It is a real masterpiece of counterpoint, a burlesque play as a parable of “the course of the world” and its alienated machinery. It is no accident that Mahler had created an extreme contrast to this circulating and contradictory machinery, a contrast which is only an episode in the third movement. But this motif which seems to come out of a far world becomes the germ cell of the last with its evident gesture of farewell and glance back. This Adagio Finale delays the end. In its last part the themes become undecided and only present in fragmentary characters. This intensifies the character of the glance back, the recollection which is no more held back, flowing forth in irregular waves. “The sentiment of meeting a monster which fills the heart of the listener at the end, listening with tension is not affected by the immediate sensation of the musical structure but merely by the consciousness of “afterwards”. The recollections from heaven, the “Urlicht" from the Second Symphony, comes back, but it is separated from us by ages. And like human beings in their last years of living the music looks back, filled with recollection, but in the same moment far away from it, music of a remembrance which died at long time ago... The recalled time has no aim, leads nowhere, the end is totally unconscious. The farewell comes without any celebration of the first theme, only dispersed groups of notes are audible, The music wants t0 say “farewell” but it fails. It fails not because of a spirit of self-command; the spectator is not able to part from the past things. The love is still living.” (Th. W. Adorno) I experience so many things at the moment (for one and a half years) that I can hardly talk about it. How could I try to describe such a vehement crisis. I see everything in a new light, I am totally agitated, I would not be astonished to feel that I am living in a new body (as Faust is in the last scene of Goethe`s play). I feel a deep longing for life and I see the "habitude of life" more beautiful than ever... How strange! When I hear music, even when I conduct myself, I hear concrete answers to all my questions and I am totally decided and secure. Or actually, I feel that there are no more answers at all. (Mahler, 1909, from a letter to Bruno Walter) ···················· “It is right that Mahler composed an Eleventh Symphonic Poem and wrote it down in a complete draft score. But this work which ought to be his Tenth Symphony will never be performed. Mahler told his wife to destroy thc sketches of the Tenth Symphony, but Alma Mahler could not decide to do so. It seems, indeed, impossible to form a complete score on the basis of Mahler’s draft,score. Even a composer who could understand Mahler’s way of composing and his “spirit” would not be able to complete this last Symphony.” These lines are an extract from Richard Specht’s biography “Mahler” (1913). The "Song of the Earth" and the Ninth Symphony had been posthumously published in 1912, one year after Mahler’s death, and they were performed for the first time under Bruno Walter’s direction. Nevertheless, there were no details known about the existence of a Tenth Symphony (only some vague rumours) and this situation continued until 1924, when Alma Mahler decided to publish the unfinished sketches and the draft score in a photographic facsimile form. Mahler planned his Tenth as a large five-movement-Symphony: Adagio - Scherzo - Purgarorio - Scherzo - Finale. Indeed only the Adagio and the first Scherzo existed in a real draft score with exact instructions concerning the instrumentation; the rest is a mere sketch, an incomplete score consisting of few connected musical lines giving only the main melodies and a vague idea of the harmonization. Richard Specht described these parts of the sketch in his Mahler biography. Important stages of the composition were unfinished when Mahler died in 1911. Even the Adagio and the first Scherzo were not totally complete. Mahler usually formed a complete score after having finished the draft score (and this is the only stage which the Adagio and the Scherzo reached) and afterwards he corrected and improved the score before the printing or even after the first performances. Nevertheless, the Adagio was published by Ernst Křenek in 1924 (but in a very insufficient way) and became a worldwide known Mahler piece. In 1964, Erwin Ratz published a corrected and totally improved edition of this Adagio after having carefully purified the draft score from all alterations and misprints. This edition was published as a part of the critical edition of Mahler’s Complete Works. In musical regard the Adagio of the Tenth Symphony is a continuation of the sad farewell mood which was expressed in the Ninth, but of course in a more positive, concrete way. It rises assertively in big leaping intervals. The whole movement has a most expressive, but also phantastic and somewhat ‘rough’ character. Arnold Schönberg wrote about the Ninth Symphony that it seemed to be a work of a more impersonal character than other Symphonies by Mahler. "It consists of objective statements, almost without any emotion, but it also has a certain beauty which is only audible to a man who likes the clear coldness of spirituality and abandons animal warmth." The tendency to a more distanced expression of the musical language influenced the Adagio of the Tenth as much as the Ninth Symphony. The climax is a terrifying dissonance, a nine-note-chord, like some awe-inspiring cosmic relevation which seems to be an outstanding musical event in Mahler’s whole work and clearly proves Schönberg`s opinion that Mahler was clearly moving up to the utter frontiers of tonality and going into atonality in the Adagio of the Tenth. The nine-note-chord is followed by a long organlike chant of moderate transfiguration. Mahler composed the Tenth Symphony in 1910 when he was fighting the last great struggles of` his life. At first, he had to face a totally new picture of the world and the world’s future which was revealed to him through the modern scientific writings about subjects as physics, chemistry and psychology. These books showed him a totally new way of thinking. He had to revise his whole philosophical conception of the world and of mankind. On the other hand, Mahler had a long discussion with Sigmund Freud in 1910 which helped him to end the long crisis of his marriage. Indeed, Mahler felt after his meeting with Sigmund Freud a new wave of loving emotion towards his wife Alma. As a proof we might take the series of long love-letters he wrote to his wife in the last time of his life, the dedication of the Eighth Symphony to Alma and the written emphatic exclamations in the draft score of the Tenth which are a totally convincing declaration of love. In addition to these facts, the written notes in the score of the Tenth show us a man who knows very clearly that he will soon die. Mahler’s last disease was incurable following the knowledge of medical science at that age. Gustav Mahler knew his lifetime was limited and his death would only be a question of some few months. In this mood he wrote down the Adagio of the Tenth and filled the pages with words of bitter farewell: Only you know what it means. Alas, alas! Alas! Farewell, my lyre! Farewell - farewell - Alas then! To live for you and to die for you - Almschi! (The nickname of Mahler’s wife Alma). Andreas Maul English Translation by Christopher Lorenz All but some parts of this recording, where the output of assistant microphones were mixed in a digital time delay alignment, was made using just two Brüel & Kjær 4006 microphones.