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CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer YELLOW Catalogue No. BLACK Job Title Page Nos. Recorded at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London, 12 April 2011 Producer – Misha Donat Engineer – Jonathan Stokes, Classic Sound Ltd Design – With Relish (for the Philharmonia Orchestra) and Darren Rumney Cover image CLebrecht Music & Arts MAHLER LORIN MAAZEL P2013 Philharmonia Orchestra C2013 Signum Records SYMPHONY NO. 1 16 1 291.0mm x 169.5mm CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer YELLOW Catalogue No. BLACK Job Title Page Nos. “On Mahler” Mahler’s earlier symphonies frequently draw GUSTAV MAHLER on the world of his Wunderhorn songs – A century after his death, Mahler’s music settings of simple folk poems about birds and SYMPHONY NO. 1 resonates more powerfully than ever. Its animals, saints and sinners, soldiers and their unique mix of passionate intensity and lovers. But this apparently naive, even childlike 1 I. Langsam, schleppend - Wie ein Naturlaut 16.26 terrifying self-doubt seems to speak directly to tone is found alongside vast musical our age. One moment visionary, the next 2 II. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell 8.27 canvasses that depict the end of the world. In despairing, this is music that sweeps us up in quieter, more intimate movements, Mahler 3 III. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen 11.19 its powerful current and draws us along in its seems to speak intimately and directly to the 4 IV. Stürmisch bewegt 20.44 drama. We feel its moments of ecstatic rapture listener, but the big outer movements are Total timings: 56.57 and catastrophic loss as if they were our own. addressed to the entire world. At its most This is not music for detached contemplation: sentimental, Mahler’s music echoes the fairy- it matters to us, urgently and directly. Its tales of children’s picture books, yet in the musical language may be romantic, but what next moment it marches with gritted teeth and makes Mahler’s music so distinctively modern unleashes terrifying violence. is its unflinching honesty – its embrace of the contradictions of life and of art. Few All this makes for great symphonic dramas, composers wrote music of such searing lyrical often lasting more than an hour, which imply a intensity, nor music that is often ironic to the vivid sense of storytelling without ever being point of parody. But it took a long time for this confined to a specific programme (as a young unique tone to be understood; in his own man, Mahler adopted the idea of programmes time, critics heard Mahler’s ability to see the from the tone poems of Richard Strauss, but PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA world from several perspectives as a sign of soon abandoned them). This is a composer LORIN MAAZEL CONDUCTOR insincerity. Today, we tend to read it as quite who insisted that the symphony should www.signumrecords.com the opposite. ‘include the whole world’ – hence its 2 3 23 291.0mm x 169.5mm CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer YELLOW Catalogue No. BLACK Job Title Page Nos. bewildering mix of different characters, and and annotations on his scores, he encouraged Symphony No. 1 (1888) he had removed the movement, clearly the the sense that, for him, it worked rather like listening to his music as a kind of music to a love scene, Mahler referred to it as the great novels of the 19th century, such as autobiography, as Berlioz had before him. Mahler suggested that his First Symphony and his hero’s ‘blunder of youth’. those by Dostoyevsky or Balzac. the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen arose But like all great art, Mahler’s music far from similar situations and the degree of The première, in November 1889, was We should remember that Mahler was a man exceeds the life that made it, just as it far overlap between them is certainly striking. For conducted by the composer in Budapest of the theatre who, for the 30 years of his exceeds his own age. His symphonies look a start, the symphony takes some of its where Mahler had recently become Artistic professional life, spent most of his time and back to those of Beethoven and Schubert, but material from the song cycle – the main theme Director to the Royal Hungarian Opera. Clearly energy conducting in the opera house. He at the same time forwards to the music of of the first movement is derived from the undecided as to what kind of work he had knew how to create an effect, to stage a scene Shostakovich and Britten. In his later works he carefree walking song Ging heut’ Morgen written, Mahler presented the work as a and to pace a drama. But, like anyone who has was increasingly drawn to the music of Bach, über’s Feld, and the dream vision at the end of ‘Symphonic Poem in Two Parts’, thus aligning worked in the theatre, he had an acute sense at the same time that his own music was the cycle reappears in the third movement of himself with the modernity of Richard Strauss that all art is ultimately artifice and make- revered by the young Schoenberg and his the symphony. But just as the songs were rather than the more conservative tradition of believe. His favourite writers were those whose pupils. This is music that crosses historical composed in the wake of Mahler’s failed Brahms. But critics and public alike were works underline their own fictionality which is boundaries – as contemporary and vital now relationship with Johanna Richter, so the perplexed by the abrupt changes of mood, why, after the dust of the drama has settled, as it was a hundred years ago. symphony was completed, at fever pitch in the especially between the spring-like atmosphere there is a quality of Mahler’s music that recalls spring of 1888, following the ending of his of the first three movements (Part I) and then the enchanted forest of Shakespeare’s A affair with Marion von Weber (wife of the the sudden reversal of character in Part II, with Midsummer Night’s Dream. composer’s grandson). In fact, it seems likely its funeral march and highly dramatic Finale. that the beginnings of the symphony go back Not for the last time, there was a demand for Perhaps it is this many-sided character to the to Mahler’s time in Kassel, and thus overlap the composer to provide a more helpful music that feeds our fascination with Mahler with the composition of the songs. In its commentary to his music. himself. Of course, this was fuelled by the original form it had five movements, including composer. Mahler subscribed fully to the an Andante (Blumine) composed in 1884 as The work languished for four years without a Romantic idea that art is made from the life of part of Mahler’s incidental music for the verse further performance, until 1893 when a the artist and, in comments to friends, letters, Maestro Lorin Maazel play, Der Trompeter von Säkkingen. Later, after revised version was performed in Hamburg, 4 5 4 5 291.0mm x 169.5mm CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer YELLOW Catalogue No. BLACK Job Title Page Nos. but Mahler’s ambivalence about the nature of so, critics reacted badly to the sense that this exuberant Allegro, based on the bright energy Mahler’s movement is not hard to hear in his work was still unresolved. He referred to it was indeed programmatic music, but with the of the second Gesellen song. But the divided terms of a scene from an opera – or operetta. both as a ‘Tone Poem in Symphonic Form’ and programme withdrawn. One called it ‘a satire world of the song cycle is not left behind; the The village dance of the outer sections gives as a ‘Symphony’. Stung by the critics’ of the symphony’ while others dubbed it, in sunny Allegro is cut short by a return to the way, in the central Trio, to more intimate comments at the première, he now provided comparison with Beethoven’s Eroica, a slow introduction, and the central exchanges – as if the chorus disperses to programmatic titles for each movement and sinfonia ironica. One listener recorded in her development section sees yet another return frame a rather flirtatious and slightly tipsy the whole work was titled ‘Titan’, apparently in diary: ‘An astonishing jumble of styles – and to this mysterious landscape. The lonely scene between the soloists. This is based on a reference to a novel by Jean-Paul Richter. Part 1 an ear-splitting, nerve-shattering din. I had wanderer can still be heard in the mournful slow waltz, characterised as sentimental and (From the Days of Youth: Flower, Fruit and never heard anything like it. It was exhilarating, dialogue between the cellos and a forest bird wistful by the sighing glissandi in the strings Thorn pieces) consisted of three movements: but no less irritating.’ That was the impression (solo flute). In Mahler’s music the beauty of and the constant elasticity of the tempo. 1. Spring without end; 2. Blumine; 3. Under of the young Alma Schindler; she became nature is often the site of human loneliness full sail. Part II (Commedia humana) was Mahler’s wife less than four months later. but also the threshold to new life. The return to The start of the third movement remains made up of 4. The Huntsman’s Funeral the Allegro is marked by a quiet horn call; by shocking even to modern listeners.

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