Mahler: Symphony no.5 - I. Trauermarsch (Funeral march)

NOTE
I am posting each movement of this symphony as a separate video as YouTube finds a copyright problem with the performance I have used. As a result, the original video, with all 5 movements combined, is completely blocked from view. There will be a new video every week for 5 weeks, until all the movements are completely posted. You can find all of them in this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkw_IqJlF_JBwDdy_1Yvq6P07AzjqaFTF

PERFORMERS
Conductor: Herbert von Karajan
Orchestra: Berliner Philharmoniker
Recording: https://youtu.be/HsclK5ytvAg

Premiering October 18, 1904, in Cologne, Mahler's 5th Symphony's ultimately optimistic colors may have been influenced by the composer’s marriage in 1902 to artistically gifted Alma Schindler. Its gentle fourth movement (Adagietto), often performed separate from the rest of the symphony, is Mahler’s most familiar music, used often to accompany romantic scenes in films and on television. Its opening fanfare is routinely required audition material for orchestral trumpeters.
Mahler once said about it, “There is nothing romantic or mystical about it; it is simply an expression of incredible energy. It is a human being in the full light of day, in the prime of his life.”

One might imagine that the composer, who was only 41 when he began work on it in 1901, might have intended this powerful and virile work as a reflection of himself, but in fact he was enduring difficult times, struggling through serious health problems and artistic quarrels with his orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic. Soon, he would be forced to resign his conducting post with the ensemble, though he would continue to be associated with the Vienna Court Opera. Yet it was in Cologne, not Vienna, that Mahler would premiere this new symphony on October 18, 1904, for in that German city, his enemies were fewer in number and less likely to make a fuss.

By this time, the symphony had lain complete for three years, but it was not until the days leading up to the premiere that the composer began to sense clouds on the horizon. After the first rehearsal, he wrote to his wife Alma, “The public, oh heavens, what are they to make of this chaos, of which new worlds are forever being engendered, only to crumble in ruin the moment after? What are they to say to this primeval music, this foaming, roaring, raging sea of sound?” Indeed, the premiere did not go particularly well, for the music was spacious and challenging; more rehearsal time might have helped. However, the experience still allowed the composer to hear the music complete and develop his own opinions about his work. Mahler soon set about revising the symphony. He would conduct it nine more times in the seven years that remained to him, and each time he would revise the work anew. The last revision was in 1911, in the final months of his life.

The symphony is scored for large orchestra, consisting of the following:

Woodwinds: 4 flutes (all doubling piccolos);
3 oboes (3rd doubling cor anglais);
3 B♭ and A clarinets (3rd doubling D clarinet and bass clarinet);
3 bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon)
Brass: 6 horns (solo horn in movement 3);
4 trumpets;
3 trombones;
tuba

Percussion:
4 timpani;
bass drum;
snare drum (used only in movement 1);
cymbals;
triangle;
whip (used only in movement 3);
tam-tam;
glockenspiel

Strings:
harp;
1st and 2nd violins;
violas;
cellos;
double basses

Видео Mahler: Symphony no.5 - I. Trauermarsch (Funeral march) канала Classical Music DIGITALIZED