Luogo e data di registrazione		All Saints Church, Tooting, London (Gran Bretagna) - gennaio 1985
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producetion		Günther Breest
	Recording Supervision		Wolfgang Stengel
	Recording Engineer		Klaus Hiemann
	Prima Edizione LP		Deutsche Grammophon | 415 476-1 | LC 0173 | 2 LPs - 53' 45" & 32' 43" | (p) 1985 | Digital
	Prima Edizione CD		Deutsche Grammophon | 415 476-2 | LC 0173 | 1 CD - 68' 56" | (p) 1985 | DDD | Symphonie No. 5 only Deutsche Grammophon | 415 959-2 | LC 0173 | 2 CDs - 65' 18" & 54' 56" (1°, 1-6) | (p) 1986 | DDD | Sechs frühe lieder (+ Symphonie No. 2; Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen)
	Note		-

Symphonie No. 5 Like most of Mahler’s symphonies, the Fifth celebrates the triumph of man, his victory over grief and death. But what do the biographical sources tell us about that summer of 1901? That Mahler completed at Maiernigg seven Rückert songs (three of them Kindertorenlieder) and the last Wunderhorn song at the same time as he began this new symphony. One can hardly avoid drawing a parallel between this creative fertility and the completion of the handsome villa he had built at the very edge of the Wörthersee. Or perhaps the connection should be with his relief at having recovered from the serious internal haemorrhage to which he had fallen victim three months earlier, and which his doctors had told him would have been fatal but for their prompt intervention: the funereal character of the first movement and of several songs of that summer very possibly originated in the trauma of having been brushed by death. The overall plan of the work was undoubtedly laid down in 1901, though its composition was not completed until the following year at Maiernigg. It was then that Mahler added to the Scherzo, which had become the second section of the symphony, a double first movement (certainly sketched during the year before) and a last “part” comprising the celebrated Adagietto and the Rondo-Finale. Thus he arrived at an architecture that was quite new, and that he was to use again, with some changes, in his Seventh and Tenth Symphonies. Never again, though, would he be inclined as here to make the Scherzo the absolute core, the centre of gravity of the entire work. Nor would he ever again compose a scherzo so expansive and so elaborately developed. When Mahler returned to Maiernigg, at the end of June 1902, his life was wholly transformed. He was accompanied by his young and radiant wife, Alma Schindler, who henceforth replaced his sister Justi as mistress of the house. It was not until 24 August, three days before leaving again for the capital, that he wrote to two friends announcing the completion of the symphony; that day he wanted to share with Alma his happiness in the finished Work. He took her by the arm and led her “almost solemnly” to the “Häuschen” (his studio secluded in the forest, far from his house), where he played to her the whole symphony on the piano. As usual, he was to add final touches throughout the next year, so that the full and final copy was not ready until the autumn of 1903. However, Mahler’s troubles were not yet over. The new symphony was to prove his “child of sorrow", even more than its predecessors. For this time the mastery he had acquired in matters of orchestration was not enough; the evolution of his style now required clarity above all. The first revision of 1904 was followed by several others. Bruno Walter wrote that most of the fees paid to Mahler by his publisher were devoted, after the first performance, to introducing retouches into a score that had already been engraved. Mahler continued until the end of his life to perfect the orchestration of the Fifth: the last revision dates from 1910. Everything in the Fifth Symphony shows a master at the height of his powers, yet at the same time reveals his need for self-renewal. It has been seen as containing "a first move towards reorganizing the world on the basis of the individual self", a move, in essence, towards abstraction, towards the abandonment of all reference to the past (Des Knaben Wunderhorn), to childhood and paradise (the Fourth Symphony), even to the great philosophical-religious themes of the Second and Third, It is a striving, too, towards a new orchestral style, towards an enrichment of the sound palette and towards a symphonic form more closely knit and more coherent (numerous thematic recalls, an interdependence of the two first and two last movements, each pair coupled to form together a single “part” of the symphony). Moreover, although there are indisputable connections between the Fifth and the songs of the same period (for example, the funeral march quotes the third of the Kindertotenlieder and there is a direct relationship between the Adagietto and the Rückert song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen), Mahler here makes a decisive leap towards an exclusively orchestral art, an art that he was to practise henceforward to the end of his short life, with the exception only of the Eighth Symphony and the Song of the Earth. At the start of the Fifth, as in the first movement of the Second Symphony written many years before, the symphonic hero is “laid to rest”. But this time the imaginary spectator - or, if you will, the symphonic narrator - does not rage against destiny; he faces it rather as a tragic but inevitable reality, in his almost impersonal resignation and sorrow, which continue even into the violence of the first interlude and the expressiveness of the second. The absence of true conflict may be regarded as the cause. or as the consequence, of the abandonment of sonata form: the thematic material develops uninterruptedly from a group of cells according to a process characteristic of Mahler`s style. This is the technique which Adorno likened to that of a novelist who assembles and interweaves the various elements of his plot according to the necessities of the action. In any event, there is no longer any need to return to the original tonality. A work beginning in C sharp minor could now end in D major. In the Funeral March of the Fifth, the two episodes which one hesitates to call “Trios”, even though both of them respond to the evident need for contrast in a march or in a dance, use themes derived from earlier material. This method of drawing from a thematic reservoir frees the composer from the bonds of predetermined form. PART I 1. Trauermarsch. In gemessenem Schritt. Streng. Wie ein Kondukt (Funeral march. At a measured pace. Strict. Like a funeral procession). The trumpet fanfare is here one of the last evocations within Mahler’s work of a world close to his childhood: the distant calls from of the barracks and the bands marching past his parents’ house. This same fanfare reappears as a kind of refrain, always to join together the different couplet-episodes of the march. In the first, Plötzlich schneller. Leidenschaftlich. Wild (Suddenly faster. Impassioned. Wild), the sorrow that has so far been contained erupts with violence and breaks out in quick feverish quaver (eighth-note) motifs, underpinned by syncopated horn chords. The return of the march theme, and of a consolatory episode, restores calm and leads to the second "Trio". Although its gentle and resigned atmosphere is as distant as possible from what has come before, the main idea is in fact none other than a thematic variant of the first theme, mixed with other motifs that have already been heard. 2. Stürmisch bewegt. Mit größter Vehemenz (Stormy in movement. With greatest vehemence). According to Mahler himself, this allegro in sonata form is the symphonyßs true first movement. The start of the exposition has no theme as such but only a short ostinato in the double basses, followed by an agitated motif in rising and falling scales. The real first subject only appears later, in the first violins. The second (Bedeutend langsamer [Distinctly slower]) turns out to be an almost literal quotation of the second “trio” from the opening march. The exposition is followed by a full development, in which fevered anguish builds up to paroxysms of violence rarely surpassed in the whole symphonic repertory. At the end of the recapitulation, the ascending, “optimistic” strains seem gradually to triumph, up to the point where at last the brass intone a victory hymn in the form of a chorale. But this victory is short-lived. The movement ends, hushed and mysterious, in scattered fragments of remembered themes. PART II 3. Scherzo: Kräftig, nicht zu schnell (Forceful, not too fast). There is no transition to soften the abrupt change of mood between the despair of the allegro and the radiant good humour that prevails throughout the Scherzo. Not only is this the longest of Mahler’s scherzos, it is one of the very few not imbued with some element of wilful parody or caricature. Its most remarkable feature is not its giant size but rather its thematic development, which is as complex and elaborate as in a sonata movement. The opening subject is given to an “obbligato” horn, which has a soloist’s role throughout the movement. It is always accompanied by a counter-melody which generally contradicts the basic triple rhythm. The second subject is a quaver (eighth-note) fugato. Its first appearance is quite short, between the two exposiand amplified at length. The gracefully hesitant rhythm of the first Trio gives it the character of a Viennese waltz, quite different from the opening ländler, whose rustic origin is retained, despite the counter-melodies with which Mahler has adorned it here. This first Trio is separated from the second by a reprise of the Scherzo and a development of the fugato episode. The nostalgic melody of the second Trio, generally given to the horns, suspends the rhythm of the dance. PART III 4. Adagietto: Sehr langsam (Very slow). After such an explosion of exuberance, it would have been inconceivable for the symphony to end tragically, and still more inconceivable to follow the Scherzo with another movement of the same kind. So there needed to be a contrast, which is the raison d’étre for the lovely Adagietto, a simple “song without words" vested in the strings alone, to a discreet accompaniment of harp arpeggios. It is a time for dreaming and for escape from the things of the world, as in the song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, which is thematically close. Those who find the charm of this new “reverie” too facile and its appeal too immediate would do well to examine the score and see how subtly, lovingly and with what refinement each bar has been finely chiselled. 5. Rondo-Finale: Allegro - Allegro giocoso. The introduction, scored for wind, has the character of an improvised divertissement. Its various motifs, introduced casually, as if by chance, provide all the melodic material for the movement, one of them coming unchanged from a Wunderhorn song of 1896, Lob des hohen Verstandes (“In praise of high intelligence”), Mahler had originally given this song the ironic title of “In praise of criticism”, and one wonders if he was thinking here of those “infernal judges” of the press who would inevitably behave like the ass of the poem and condemn his symphony. The first subject of this sonata-rondo finale is a direct descendant of the last movement of Beethovcn’s Second Symphony. It was also from the Viennese classics that Mahler took the idea of introducing fugal elements, of which the first here is related thematically to that of the Scherzo. Afterwards the Wunderhorn theme gives rise to a “grazioso” episode, but this is cut short and deflected into a return of the first subject, again preceded by its divertissement. The following episode, fully developed, combines various motifs already heard with a new graceful round in the strings, which one soon discovers to be quite simply the Adagietto melody, recalled practically verbatim but now in a fast tempo! A lightning accclerando is then followed by a brass chorale closely resembling that of the second movement. Here it symbolizes the decisive victory of the forces of life over anguish, grief and death. Many critics have found the optimism of this conclusion ambiguous, which may well be because they could not accept Mahler`s distortion of the Adagietto’s ecstatic melody, transformed from ethereal to earthly utterance. But ambiguity is one of the main underlying currents which sustain Mahler’s art, which contribute to its inexhaustible richness and its perpetual relevance. If the work had ended with some straightforward apotheosis, it could not then have challenged us, in the way that Mahler still does, with increasing force as time passed. Henry-Louis de la Grange (Translation: Paul Griffiths) Sechs frühe lieder Frühlingsmorgen (Spring Morning) The poem is by “Richard Leander", the literary pseudonym of a physician, Richard von Volksmann, who published a small collection of his poems with Breitkopf in Leipzig in 1878. The title of the song was added by the composer. His choice of this poem is easy to understand, since it is close in style to the Wunderhorn collection and to his own early poems. Musically, the distant suggestion of the ländler, the simplicity of rhythm and melody, the bird trills and the fourth and fifth motifs all create, even at this date, the early 1880s, xi typically Mahlerian atmosphere. Five Wunderhorn Songs Mahler’s discovery of the “folksong" anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn at the end of 1887 and the beginning of 1888 fulfilled all his needs as a composer at that time. In this respect one can establish a convincing parallel between, on the one hand, the almost mystical nostalgia which Mahler felt, at the end of the l9th century, for the world of childhood and the lost paradise of medieval Germany, this at a time when a severe crisis was about to give birth to the new art of the 20th century, and, on the other hand, the need evinced by the beginning of the 19th century, when the Wunderhorn anthology was compiled, to return to nature by way of the people and their spontaneous creations. This folk source had been fundamental for Mahler, right from childhood: the beauty of nature, the naive faith ofa child, the cruel destiny of soldiers, exiles and victims of fate, all that was as familiar to him as the principal themes of folk poetry, which included love betrayed, oppression, revolt and homesickness. In all he wrote 24 Wunderhorn songs, including those which figure in three of the symphonies. The first group of nine songs with piano accompaniment was written in part for the children of Karl and Marion von Weber, who were Mahler`s best friends during the two years he spent at the theatre in Leipzig. These songs are shorter and less elaborate than the large orchestral settings from his Hamburg period in the 1890s. Nevertheless, in the latter he pursued his earlier efforts to introduce all kinds of technical refinements from the art song into a musical language inspired by folksong. Selbstgefühl (Self-esteem) Here the stylized ländler rhythm serves to unify an otherwise extremely free composition. This last of the Wunderhorn songs with piano is one of the most openly humorous. The heavy bass, in octaves, underlines the popular character of the piece and very amusingly suggests the narrator’s pretentious stupidity. Later Mahler was similarly to conclude his next Wunderhorn collection, with orchestra, on an entirely comic note (in the satirical song Lob des hohen Verstandes). Nicht wiedersehen (No more seen) This is one of Mahler’s greatest early masterpieces. It is a song of rare eloquence, where the slow march rhythm symbolizes, as always in his music, the ineluetable tragedy of fate. Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz (On the ramparts at Strasbourg) Like Nicht wiedersehen, this is a big expressive song on a "military" subject, in slow march rhythm, with fanfare effects. The nostalgic “shawm" solo (“wie ein Schalmei", Mahler specifics, although the text speaks of an alpine horn) returns between the two verses of the last stanza. Finally the coda recalls the military character of the first stanza, to end on two drum rolls, pianissimo. Ablösung im Sommer (Summer Replacement) Despite the deliberately popular flavour of this piece, it is an art song of very free form. As always in Mahler, stylized birdsong is artfully integrated into the thematic material. The sequence of descending common chords, which produces a consciously archaic effect in the middle of the song, must have scandalized purists at the time. Nothing in this delightful, brief song could lead one to have guessed that a few years later it would provide most of the melodic material for the huge scherzo ofthe Third Symphony, which was also to borrow its literary “theme” from the animal world (here the "replacement" of the cuckoo by the nightingale). Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen (How to make bad children good) In this brief and humorous song, Mahler’s art is well concealed behind the vigour and naivety of the musical language. Nevertheless, a number of telling details reveal themselves to closer scrutiny, in particular the asymmetrical phrase structure resulting from subtle elisions as well as interpolated “echo” bars. Henry-Louis de la Grange (Translation: Paul Griffiths)