Luogo e data di registrazione		Grosser Saal, Musikverein, Vienna (Austria) - marzo 1996
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Executive Producers		Roger Wright / Ewald Markl
	Recording Producer		Christian Gansch
	Tonmeister (Balance Engineer)		Rainer Maillard
	Recording Engineer		Reinhard Lagemann
	Editing		Reinhard Lagemann
	Prima Edizione LP		nessuna
	Prima Edizione CD		Deutsche Grammophon - 453 416-2 - (1 CD) - durata 72' 17" - (p) 1997 - 4D DDD
	Note		Cover Illustration: Painting by Franz Marc

During the night of 24/25 February 1901 Mahler suffered a serious intestinal haemorrhage. Next morning the doctors told him that he would have died if they had not treated him promptly. This doubtless explains the dark and funereal nature of some of the music he composed during the summer months: “Der Tamboursg’sell”, the last of the Wunderhorn Lieder, three Kindertotenlieder, and the first movements of the Fifth Symphony - only its Scherzo breathes happiness and joie de vivre throughout. The following year, back in Maiernigg, Mahler completed the Symphony with a third and last "part" comprising the Adagietto and the Rondo-Finale. thus devising a structure lor the Fifth which he was to use again with only slight modifications in the Seventh Symphony. That same summer, he started a new life with his radiant young wife, Alma. Ensconced in his häuschen, his studio hidden in the midst of the forest. Mahler wrote for her in secret the song "Liebst du um Schönheit", one of the most beautiful declarations of love ever composed in musical form. During the winter, as was his custom, Mahler worked out the details of his score. The final copy was not completed until the autumn of 1903, but even then the story of the Fifth was really just beginning. As early as the first reading rehearsals with the Vienna Philharmonic, in September 1904, Mahler had doubts about the instrumentation. For the first time his mastery of orchestration was proving inadequate to cope with the development of his style, the immediate problem being that of establishing clarity within a polyphonic texture more densely woven than ever before. And so began the interminable saga of the Symphony`s revisions. The last one, which dates from 1909, was not published until 1964. The first pertormance of the Fifth Symphony took place in Cologne on 18 October 1904. Two years after his first triumph as a composer, with the Third Symphony in Krefeld in June 1902, Mahler had at last established his reputation in Germany. And yet neither the public nor the critics seemed prepared to follow him in the new direction his music was now taking. There was much booing mingled with the applause, and the next day the press delivered a harsh verdict. Part I 1. Trauermarsch. In gemessenem Schritt. Streg. Wie ein Kondukt (Funeral March. At a measured pace. Sternly, Like a funeral cortège), 2/2, C sharp minor. Like the Second Symphony nine years earlier, the Fifth begins with a grandiose funeral march. The symphonic hero is "laid to rest", but this time the mood is one of noble and lofty resignation. The movement's two episodes, which one hesitates to call "Trios", though they are clearly intended to provide the expected contrast, differ as much as possible from each other in character, yet both of them use themes and motifs derived from previous material. The trumpet signal which establishes the character of the movement at the outset returns several times like a refrain to link the various episodes of the March. The real theme (on violins and cellos) is related to that of the last Wunderhorn Lied, “Der Tamboursg’sell”, composed during the same summer of 1901. After its second exposition (violins and woodwind) it is followed by a new "consolatory” element (A flat) in sixths. which has the same dotted rhythm. In the first of the Trios (Plötzlich schneller. Leidenschaftlich. Wild [Suddenly faster. Passionate. Savage], B flat minor). grief, restrained until now, erupts into rapid, feverish motifs in quavers (eighth notes). The reprise of the March and the “consoling” episode restore calm and lead to a plaintive and gentle second "Trio". Particularly noteworthy is the effect Mahler obtains in the last bars by a new means, with the flute echoing the ascending arpeggio of the trumpet as though the March were fading away into the distance. 2. Stürmisch bewegt. Mit grösster Vehemenz (Tempcstuously. With the greatest vehemence). Alla breve. A minor. This Allegro in sonata form is the symphony’s true "first movement". The beginning of its exposition contains no real theme, just a short ostinato on the basses, followed by an agitated motif in ascending and descending scales. The authentic first subject appears only later, in the first violins. As for the second theme (Bedeutend langsamer [Significantly slower]), it is an almost literal quotation from the second “Trio” of` the opening March. The exposition is followed by a broad development, in which anguish and rage rise to paroxysms rarely matched, let alone surpassed, in the entire symphonic repertoire. Such is the violence of the feelings unleashed here - revolt, frenzied despair - that it is not surprising when the following reprise makes nonsense of the classical formal criteria. Just when one expects the return to the first subject, it is the second that reappears in E minor, however, it quickly takes over the main motifs of the first. At the end ofthe reprise the ascending "optimistic" elements seem to gain the upper hand: the brass strike up a hymn of triumph in chorale form. But this victory is short-lived, and the movement ends in gloom, anguish and mystery. "The old tempest dies away to an echoing whimper", as the German philosopher Theodor Adorno so aptly put it. Part II 3. Scherzo: Kräftig, nicht zu schnell (Vigorously, not too fast), 3/4, D major. The change in tone is abrupt between the despair of the Allegro and the radiant good humour of the third movement. This is Mahler’s longest Seherzo (819 bars) and one of the few in which there is no element of irony or parody. The thematic elaboration is as complex as that of a sonata movement. The first horn “obbligato” plays a soloistic role in most of the movement, and Mahler deliberately breaks the rules of the genre with a number of fugato episodes, whose presence in a dance movement is, to say the least, unusual. The gracefully hesitating rhythm of the first Trio (etwas ruhiger, [somewhat calmer]) is more suggestive of a city dweller’s waltz than a countryman’s Ländler. The second Trio, with its romantic horn solos, carries us from the dance floor to the enchanted world of nature. Later, however, the various rhythmic and melodic elements of the three different episodes are closely intertwined and developed, often simultaneously. Part III 4. Adagietto: Sehr langsam (Very slow), 4/4, F major. After such a display of joie de vivre there needed to be contrast; that is the chief raison d'être of the celebrated Adagietto, a “song without words" for strings, discreetly accompanied by the harp. The central episode develops and amplifies the main theme, which passes through a wide range of different keys benire being restated in much modified form. Those tempted to condemn the immediate appeal of this gentle rêverie as too facile are advised to examine the score and note its exquisite craftsmanship - for example, how Mahler creates an effect of weightlessness by omitting the bass note of the tonic chord in the first two bars, or the effect of time suspended at the end of the movement by means of retardations in the melodic lines, as if each note were reluctant to assume its place within the perfect chord. 5. Rondo-Finale: Allegro - Allegro giocoso, 2/2, D major. The introduction on the woodwinds unfolds like a carefree, spirited improvisation, but the various motifs, all seemingly flung out at random, will all play an essential role in later developments. The first subject of the Rondo proper descends in direct line from that of the finale of Beethoven’s Second Symphony. It is Beethoven, too, who inspired the general forrn - half sonata, half rondo - and also from him that Mahler took the idea of introducing fugal elements. The second fugal episode, which is developed at length, combines several familiar motifs with a new element grazioso on the strings, which turns out to be a complete, varied restatement, in quick tempo, of the central development of the Adagietto! After a false reprise of the main subject (in A flat, on the low strings), the third episode again develops the Adagietto melody. It gradually gathers speed and ends in whirling scales, leading to the brass chorale to which Alma objected in 1902. It is in fact a literal restatement of the carefree little melody played by the clarinet in the movement’s introduction. Theodor Adorno rightly observed that the bars which follow the chorale and bring the symphony to a close have a suggestion of parody and distortion about them, a "whiff of sulphur". In this, his first brilliant Finale, Mahler seems to be attempting to revive the vigour of classical forms and techniques. Yet a feeling of uneasiness, a slight flavour of irony shows through the gleaming surface. In Die Meistersinger, Wagner had already demonstrated how a “learned” style could lend itself to caricature. If Mahler had concluded the Fifth Symphony with a simple, straightforward apotheosis he would have ceased to be questioning us; but that is something he never does. This is no doubt why his music has lost nothing of its fascination, of its capacity to challenge, stimulate and surprise. Henry-Louis de La Grange