Master of Psychodrama (Mahler - Symphony No 5)

Member Name: pvincent

Product:	Mahler - Symphony No 5
Date:	30/06/00 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hugely absorbing emotional voyages

Disadvantages: Not for those who prefer light classical!

Mahler was a restless spirit, obsessed with death, and with the quest to find a meaning to life. These characteristics pretty well describe his music, too. By the end of a Mahler symphony, the feeling is not so much that one has listened to a piece of music, but that one has completed a turbulent voyage of the imagination. Listening to Mahler can be an exhausting, consuming experience, which is why his music can be so deeply satisfying!

Mahler wrote some moving song-cycles, such as Das Knabisches Wunderhorn, and the controversial Kindertotenlieder - a cycle of songs about the deaths of children, which agonisingly was to foreshadow the death of his 3-year old daughter a few years later.

But his greatest legacy is his large-scale works. These include the early symphonic Das Klagende Lied, a choral symphony-in-disguise (Das Lied Von Der Erde - The Song Of The Earth), and nine numbered symphonies.

The cycle includes three successive purely instrumental symphonies, numbers 5, 6 and 7, which contain some of the most expressive voiceless music written for orchestra. Symphony 8 is a massive choral work in 2 sections, which is often known as the "Symphony Of A Thousand" because of the sheer size of its choral forces. Symphonies 2 and 3 are enormous works with epic choral finales in the manner of Beethoven's 9th. Symphony 4 uses music which was intended originally for the 3rd symphony, excluded because it already ran for a marathon 100 minutes! Bracketing these are the 1st symphony, which sees Mahler's symphonic expertise already fully realised, and the 9th, which is very downbeat for much of its length, sometimes agonisingly so.

Mahler was an enormous influence on later composers such as Schoenberg and Berg, and paved the way for the "Second Viennese School". Probably the last of the great romantics.

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