Gustav Mahler’s Birth Anniversary

Watch the series ‘Discovering Masterpieces’! Your audio-visual concert guide to the great masterpieces of classical music. The series brings you 20 half-hour documentaries on 20 classical masterpieces: acclaimed experts, famous soloists and outstanding conductors take you on a journey back to the time and place of composition. In today’s documentary, Gustav Mahler’s ‘Das Lied von der Erde’. No composer before Mahler had ever devoted himself exclusively to two genres so apparently incompatible as the intimate lied and the grandiose symphony. In ‘Das Lied von der Erde’, Mahler fascinatingly combines, at this late stage of his career, these two seemingly opposed genres in a 'symphony of lieder' for two solo voices and orchestra. Habakuk Traber presents this exceptional work of which Mahler himself wrote that "I think it is probably the most personal composition I have created thus far”.

American conductor Kent Nagano conducts the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 7. The composer wrote the work’s second and fourth movements, both entitled ‘Nachtmusik’ (Night Music), in the summer of 1904. He completed the other three movements one year later. The work did not premiere until September 19, 1908 in Prague with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer himself. The work features a large orchestration. As in some of his other symphonies, Mahler used unconventional instruments: a Tenorhorn in the first movement, a guitar and mandolin in the fourth movement, and cowbells in the second and fifth movements. This performance was recorded at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium, Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2014.

"It would be hard to find anything greater, more significant or more moving anywhere in musical life today: total harmony of mind and heart, poetry and outcry, fear and consolation, knowing and feeling," declared the Berne paper Der Bund after this stunning performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony in August 2003 by the newly founded Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Claudio Abbado had formed this ensemble from famous instrumentalists, celebrated chamber-musicians and experienced soloists from the world's best orchestras, and the event was sold out months in advance. In this performance, the magnificent soloists Eteri Gvazava (soprano) and Anna Larsson (mezzo-soprano) are accompanied by Orfeón Donostiarra choir.

Watch the series ‘Discovering Masterpieces’! Your audio-visual concert guide to the great masterpieces of classical music. The series brings you 20 half-hour documentaries on 20 classical masterpieces: acclaimed experts, famous soloists and outstanding conductors take you on a journey back to the time and place of composition. In this documentary, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. The musical canvas and emotional scope of this work are huge. Herbert von Karajan said once that when you hear Mahler's Fifth, “you forget that time has passed. A great performance of the Fifth is a transforming experience.” The English lecturer and musician Jeremy Barham introduces the work at the piano and reflects on the secrets of the composition.

On November 14, 1987, a promising conductor made his Berlin Philharmonic debut with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6: Simon Rattle. In retrospect Rattle says, “I felt that I was finding my voice on that day.” Mahler’s multifaceted work is now again on the program when Sir Simon appears for the last time as chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker in the Philharmonie in 2018. The wheel comes full circle. Mahler's Symphony No. 6 is often referred to by the nickname Tragische ("Tragic"). Mahler composed work during a happy time in his life, as he had married his wife Alma in 1902 and became father of his second daughter. This contrasts with the tragic and even nihilistic last movement of the symphony.