Wow (Mahler - Symphony No 5)

Member Name: Pingu

Product:	Mahler - Symphony No 5
Date:	30/06/00 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Extremely Moving

Disadvantages: see above

I have to be in the mood to put on a Mahler CD, not because there is any question of the value of his music, but because it is never ever 'wallpaper' music. Mahler will make you listen.

His great achievements were in the fields Lieder and Symphonies, obsessions which crossed paths on one or two occasions, with voices entering his symphonies, and the writing of several orchestral song cycles.

His orchestration is beyond belief. If you have ever tried to orchestrate a piece of any magnitude, and hold the listener's interest in your 'sound,' then you will be staggered by Mahler's power of invention. In particular he has a very distinctive woodwind sound, employing lots of trills on clarinets and oboes. His string sound is also unmistakeable with the 1st violins often playing in the upper reaches of the stratosphere. His harmony and counterpoint seem to be completely effortless, and pushed the fabric of tonality to its very limits. At points in his final works he actually moves over into atonality, but not in any contrived way.

The raw emotion behind his symphonic writing is sometimes agonizing. Try and listen to the Adagio from his incomplete 10th symphony without being moved. It simply isn't possible.

The only thing which marres Mahler's music is that he sometimes doesn't seem to have been able to decide what to leave out. His ambition was to have the symphony contain all of life, and frequently he writes very long movements juxtaposing small chamber textures with massive orchestral forces in a way that threatens to fall apart at the seams. It was a gamble, and some critics will claim it didn't pay off, that his music isn't tight enough. But we don't listen to a whole movment at once, we listen from moment to moment, and on this front Mahler's achievement is just phenomenal.

Summary: