Luogo e data di registrazione		Orchestra Hall, Chicago (USA) - maggio 1998
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Executive Producer		Dr. Marion Thiem - Karl-August Naegler / Rainer Maillard - Reinhard Lagemann
	Recording Producer		Karl-August Naegler
	Tonmeister (Balance Engineer)		Rainer Maillard
	Recording Engineer		Reinhard Lagemann
	Editing		Rainer Maillard
	Prima Edizione LP		nessuna
	Prima Edizione CD		Deutsche Grammophon - 459 610-2 - (1 CD) - durata 52' 47" - (p) 1999 - 4D DDD
	Note		Cover: Konstantin Tschebotarjow "Frühstuck in Suuk-Su", 1918.

By the time he was 18 year old, Gustav Mahler had only one aim in life: to become a composer. Later he claimed that the conservative jury which in 1881 had refused to award him the Vienna Beethoven Prize for his cantata Das klagende Lied was entirely responsible for the long years he had had to spend in the "prison", the "hell" of the theatre. To survive, at that time when all he possessed were his gifts and his hopes, what else could a young musician do? And so, at the age of 20, Mahler threw himself into the conducting prolession with a seriousness and an ardour bordering on the fanatical. For four years he gave up composing. his activities in the theatre affording him not the slightest respite. He took up the composer`s pen again only under the compulsion of an unhappy love affair. In 1884, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) were the outcome of his infatuation with a soprano at the Kassel Theatre, where he held the post of Kapellmeister. This cycle of songs for voice and orchestra was destined to remain untouched among his papers for almost twelve years. Meanwhile another hopeless love affair had again triggered off the creative process: "These emotions had reached such a degree of intensity in me that they suddenly burst out in an impetuous stream." That was in 1888. Mahler, now 27, was conductor in Leipzig. His “Symphonic Poem”, later to be called his First Symphony, was begun in January and finished in March of that year. It had five movements, for Mahler had insertcd a little Andante borrowed from an earlier piece of stage music. “I was totally unaware”, he confessed later, “that I had written one of my boldest works. I imagined naively that it was childishly simple, that it would please immediately, and that I was going to be able to live comfortably on the royalties it would earn.” So much for the illusions of a young composer! The following summer he moved heaven and earth, in Prague, Munich, Dresden and Leipzig, to have his work performed, but in vain. He finally had to conduct the first performance himself on 20 November 1889 in Budapest, where he was then director of the Hungarian Opera. Alas, on the evening of the unfortunate premiere the conservative Budapest public reacted with stupefaction that quickly gave way to suppressed indignation. The critics were just as hostile, accusing him of deliberately indulging in nonsensical bizarrerie, crazy cacophony, brazen vulgarity - in short, of offending against all the canons of music. Four years later in Hamburg, where he had meanwhile been appointed first conductor at the Stadttheater, Mahler completely revised the work, still retaining the Andante but cutting out an episode in the finale (just before the coda) and replacing it with one of the most astonishing passages in the entire score, the angry unison motif on the violas which gradually brings back the first theme. In October he conducted a "Popular Concert in philharmonic style", entirely comprising first perfornranees of his works, one of which was entitled "Titan: a musical poem in symphonic form". The audience`s reaction in Hamburg was slightly more favourable than in Budapest, but the critics again accused him of a total lack of discernment in his choice of material, of giving free rein to his “subjectivity”, and of “mortally offending against the sense of beauty”. After a third setback, in Weimar, Mahler tried again in 1896 in Berlin. The work, shorn of the Andante, now bore its definitive title of “First Symphony”. To enable the public to understand it more easily, Mahler repeatedly drew up “programmes”, all more or less along the same lines, for his "Symphonic Poem”, later Symphony. In 1893 he called the first movement an evocation of nature’s awakening from its long winter sleep. The third movement he described as a “funeral march in the style of Callot” and accorded it an extended commentary. Mahler found the initial inspiration for this piece in an old Austrian engraving, "The Huntsman’s Funeral", in which the animals of the forest accompany their traditional enemy’s coffin to the graveside, accompanied by a band of Bohemian musicians. The movement is intended to express a mood alternating between ironic gaiety and uncanny brooding, which is then suddenly interrupted, at the beginning of the finale, by "the sudden outburst of despair from a deeply wounded heart". Mahler was aware of the march’s originality and feared that it might puzzle the audience. The same indeed might be said of the whole of the work: with its mixture of sorrow and irony, the grotesque and the sublime, tragedy and humour, it is steeped in the atmosphere of German romantic literature, and finds its themes and underlying inspiration in the permanent conflict between idealism and realism to be found in the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Jean Paul, between the demands of a spirit animated by the cult of beauty and goodness and the degrading realities of everyday life. 1. Langsam. Schleppend. "Wie ein Naturlaut" [Slow. Dragging. Like a sound of Nature], 4/4, D minor. Few composers have succeeded in evoking so poetically and with such simple means the romantic magic of nature’s awakening, its birdsong, legendary hunting horns and distant fanfares. We can almost picture the young Mahler here, as he has described himself, a child, lost interminably in his dreams, all alone, motionless, in the heart of the forest, in a trance, listening to the slightest sound from near or far. Between the development and the re-exposition of the first movement comes a varied reprise of the introduction with, as always with Mahler, numerous modifications. - Immer sehr gemachlich [Very restrained throughout], 3/2. D major. In this Allegro, which consists almost entirely of a single theme. Mahler amplifies and continuously develops the second of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen without ever giving an impression of effort or repetitiveness. This “Symphonic Fantasia” always seems to flow from its source with the sense of spontaneity that belongs to great art. 2. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell [Vigorous and lively, but not too fast], 3/4, A major. This is undoubtedly the most rustic of all Mahler’s scherzos in landler form. Several motifs in it are derived from a lied he composed at 20, Hans und Grethe. In the Trio (Recht gemächlich [Restrained], F major), the dance becomes more graceful. The shadow of Bruckner can be glimpsed here, no doubt because his ländler derive from the same source in Austrian folklore. 3. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen [Solemn and measured, without dragging]. 4/4. D minor. This grotesque funeral march is undoubtedly the most fascinating movement of the four. Its originality surprises us even today, and strikes us in many respects as being prophetic. No wonder it upset and scandalized the audiences of the time. The canon ("Frère Jacques" played in the minor) is introduced by a solo double bass playing in its highest register and is then taken up successively by the bassoon, the cellos, the tuba and various instrumental groups, their sounds deliberately "disguised and camouflaged". The crescendo which then builds up through the increasing number of instruments, not through playing louder, is interrupted by the entry of the “Musikanten” (street musicians). With their popular refrains and Bohemian glissandi, they introduce an element of deliberate “banality” and “vulgarity”: street music, simple and unadorned, here intrudes for the first time in the sacrosanet domain of the symphony. One can easily understand why the guardians of musical propriety were profoundly shocked. After returning once more to the march, the music passes without transition from the grotesque to the sublime with the coda section of the last of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (at the phrase "Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum"). The whole of the melody is played in G major on the strings. And then, at once. the march resumes inexorably, this time in the key furthest removed from the rest of the movement: E flat minor, in which the “Musikanten” also restate their first “refrain". The initial key of D minor is re-established as if by magic in the space of only two bars, and we are back again to the canon, on which Mahler uses all his contrapuntal skill to superimpose a hyperexpressive version of the second “refrain". The movement dies away in a long, ghostly diminuendo, after which the sudden explosion at the beginning of the finale comes as one of the most celebrated "surprises" in the symphonic repertory. 4. Stürmisch bewegt [Tempestuous], 3/2, F minor/D major. This, the only big dramatic movement in the symphony, opens with a short introduction in which fragments of most of the later thematic material pass quickly in review. The principal theme, expressing determination, pride and warlike ardour, is one of those ascending motifs that Mahler uses to suggest aspiration to transcendence and a higher order. The somewhat Tchaikovskian character, exceptional in Mahler, of the second thematic element (Sehr gesangvoll) [very songlike], D flat major) has often been noted, but the mystical stillness of the long violin cantilena is also intensely Mahlerian. Its character is so remote from that of the first theme that it is excluded completely from the development which follows; the only element of contrast is provided at the end by an unexpected restatement of the introduction to the first movement. This flows quite naturally into a reprise of the second theme, which itself announces the recapitulation. The form of this finale is difficult to grasp at first, but il fascinates us today with its violent outbursts of conflicting emotions, suggesting the influence of Berlioz and Liszt more than that of Bruckner. What is even more astonishing about the whole of the First Symphony than the novelty of its style and instrumentation is the way it turns its hack on contemporary trends, and in particular the world of Wagner, a composer whom Mahler idolized, in order to return to the sources of German romanticism. Mahler was right when he spoke of a curse hanging over him at the beginning of his career as a composer. Did Beethoven‘s style, in his first works, not owe much to Haydn and Mozart? Had Wagner’s music in his early years not imitated the style of Meyerbeer? Why therefore did he, Mahler, from the age of 20, have to be so totally himself? Henry-Louis de La Grange