克勞迪奧·阿巴多指揮琉森音樂節管弦樂團演繹
古斯塔夫·馬勒《第五交響曲》
The Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler was composed in 1901 and 1902, mostly during the summer months at Mahler's cottage at Maiernigg. Among its most distinctive features are the funereal trumpet solo that opens the work and the frequently performed Adagietto (the fourth movement). For example, the Adagietto was conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York on 8 June 1968, the day of the burial of Robert Kennedy.
The fourth movement is arguably Mahler's most famous single piece of music, and is the most frequently performed extract from Mahler's works. It is perhaps best known for its use in the 1971 Luchino Visconti film Death in Venice. However, it was frequently performed on its own before then, chiefly because in the early 20th century music programmers did not believe whole Mahler symphonies would be acceptable to audiences. Indeed, the British premiere of the entire Fifth Symphony came thirty-six years after the Adagietto alone had been introduced in 1909.
The Adagietto was written as Mahler's love song to Alma. According to her letter to Willem Mengelberg, Mahler left a small poem: "Wie ich dich liebe, Du meine Sonne, ich kann mit Worten Dir's nicht sagen. Nur meine Sehnsucht kann ich Dir klagen und meine Liebe. (How much I love you, you my sun, I cannot tell you that with words. I can only lament to you my longing and love.)"
The musical canvas and emotional scope of the work, which lasts over an hour (around 70 minutes), are huge. After its premiere, Mahler is reported to have said, "Nobody understood it. I wish I could conduct the first performance fifty years after my death." Conductor Herbert von Karajan said that when one hears Mahler's Fifth, "you forget that time has passed. A great performance of the Fifth is a transforming experience. The fantastic finale almost forces you to hold your breath."
The work is in five movements:
1. Trauermarsch (Funeral March). In gemessenem Schritt. Streng. Wie ein Kondukt (C-sharp minor)
2. Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz (Moving stormily, with the greatest vehemence) (A minor)
3. Scherzo. Kräftig, nicht zu schnell (D major)
4. Adagietto. Sehr langsam (F major)
5. Rondo-Finale. Allegro - Allegro giocoso. Frisch (D major)
The first two movements constitute Part I of the symphony (as designated by Mahler in the score), the long Scherzo constitutes Part II, and the last two movements constitute Part III.
The piece is generally regarded as Mahler's most conventional symphony up to that point, but from such an unconventional composer it still had many peculiarities. It almost has a four movement structure, as the first two can easily be viewed as essentially a whole. The symphony also ends with a Rondo, in the classical style. Some peculiarities are the funeral march that opens the piece (starting with a rhythmic figure that unmistakably references the opening notes of Beethoven's 5th symphony), and the Adagietto for harp and strings that interrupts the booming score.
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Claudio Abbado, Conductor
Mahler wrote his fifth symphony during the summers of 1901 and 1902. This was a time of great change for the composer. On the positive side he moved into his own lakeside villa in the southern Austrian province of Carinthia in June 1901. Mahler himself was delighted with his new-found status as the owner of a grand villa. According to friends, he could hardly believe how far he had come from his humble beginnings. He had one of the best jobs in the musical world as Director of the Vienna Court Opera and was the principal conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, one of the world’s great orchestras. His own music was also starting to be successful. But he had not yet found the love of his life. This last missing element in his life fell into place later in 1901 when he met Alma Schindler. By the time he was back at his summer villa in summer 1902, they were married and she was expecting their first child.
On the negative side, Mahler had experienced severe health problems in February 1901 when he suffered a sudden major hemorrhaging and his doctor later told him that he had come within an hour of bleeding to death. The composer spent quite a while recuperating and doubtless was shaken by the experience.
With so much going on in an artist’s life it is no surprise that the music Mahler started writing in summer 1901 was noticeably different from the music he had previously written. With hindsight we can see that this was the beginning of what was to become Mahler’s middle period. Symphonies five, six and seven all belong to this period and have much in common, and are also markedly different from the first four, which all have strong links to vocal music. For example, symphonies two, three and four all include singers, whereas none of the middle three symphonies have them. The middle symphonies are pure orchestral works and are, by Mahler’s standards, taut and lean. As his wife said of the composer at this time, “he was at the height of his powers”.
Nostalgia begins to creep into the music during Mahler’s middle period. The first four symphonies were written during the composer’s twenties and thirties. The middle three were written by a man in his forties while the last works were written in the shadow of some terrible personal tragedies that struck Mahler in 1907. This nostalgia in Mahler’s music is often linked with music associated with the composer’s love of nature. This is particularly true in the sixth and seventh symphonies where Mahler includes distant cowbells in the orchestra. In the fifth symphony this longing is most clearly heard in the middle movement with its solo horn.
Counterpoint also becomes a more important element in Mahler’s music from the fifth symphony onwards. The ability to write good counterpoint was highly cherished by Baroque composers and Johann Sebastian Bach is regarded as the greatest composer of contrapuntal music. Thus, it is only logical that Bach played an important part in Mahler’s musical life at this time. He was a subscriber to the edition of Bach’s collected works that was being published at the turn of the century, later conducting and arranging works by Bach. Mahler’s renewed interest in counterpoint can best be heard in the third and the final movements of the fifth symphony.
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