Gustav Mahler died in 1911. His compositions made major contributions to the development of music. As a member of the Minneapolis Civic Orchestra, I performed this work many years ago, and I recall its rehearsals and preparation.
Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 is an amazing wonder of music history, rigorously peculiar, disturbingly new, and timelessly modern. ‘Wie ein Naturlaut’ (‘Like a sound of nature’) is written above the first notes of the symphony.
It is both the ‘prelude’ and the key to his symphonic cosmos as a whole. Mahler captures this music of the world, transforms it into a symphony in the old, comprehensive sense of the word and uses it to create his masterpiece of harmony. From the connotation of militarily marches to folk songs, from dance and popular music to animal sounds: everything has its place in Mahler’s symphonic world.
Composed over the course of just a few months at the beginning of 1888 in Leipzig, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 is a true musical awakening. Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig bring Mahler’s sounds of nature to life in a riveting performance.
Here is Riccardo Chailly, comducting the Mahler First:
