Luogo e data di registrazione		Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin (Germania) - aprile 2007
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Executive Producers		Valérie Gross / Ute Fesquet
	Producer		Christian Gansch
	Recording Engineers (Tonmeister)		Ulrich Vette / Hans-Ulrich Bastin
	Assistant Engineer		Wolf-Dieter Karwatky
	Project Coordinator		Matthias Spindler
	Prima Edizione LP		nessuna
	Prima Edizione CD		Deutsche Grammophon - 00289 477 6597 - (2 CD's) - durata 23' 44" | 61' 32" - (p) 2007 - DDD
	Note		Cover: © Felix Broede

Munich, 12 September 1910, 7.30 p.m. Built entirely of glass and steel, the vast new concert hall of the International Exhibition Centre in Munich was full to overflowing with an audience of 3400. Facing them was a chorus of 850 (500 adults and 350 children) and one of the largest orchestras everto have been assembled since the first performance of Berlioz's Requiem: 146 players, together with eight vocal soloists and eleven brass players (eight trumpeters and three trombonists) positioned throughout the hall. They were assembled for the long-awaited first performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. The audience included many celebrities: apart from the whole of the Bavarian royal family, there were also many of the leading figures of contemporary culture - the composers Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Camille Saint-Saëns and Alfredo Casella; the writers Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Emil Ludwig, Hermann Bahr and Arthur Schnitzler; the conductors Bruno Walter, Oskar Fried and Franz Schalk; the most famous theatre director of his day, Max Reinhardt; and many many more. At exactly a quarter to eight Mahler came on to the platform. Thin and pale, he made his way quickly through the crowd of performers. As he unleashed the vast choral and orchestral forces assembled before him, he may well have recalled the day in July 1906 when he retired to his studio in the depths of the Carinthian forest. It was here that he had been overwhelmed by blinding inspiration, here that the blazing words of the Whitsun Hymn had struck him with all their irresistible force, here that the three incantatory words "Veni, creator spiritus" had come to him as though by a miracle to dispel the sense of anxiety that he felt each year when, after eleven hyperactive months at the Vienna Court Opera, he came to pick up the threads of his creative life. That day, the whole work took on physical form in a few blinding flashes. Feverishly, he noted down an outline plan: 1. Hymn: Veni, creator spiritus; 2. Scherzo; 3. Adagio; 4. Hymn: The Birth of Eros. As always, it was only gradually that the initial outline assumed a clearer shape. The theme noted down for the final movement was still untexted, but Mahler realized that it was perfect for the words of Veni, creator spiritus, which he wanted to use for the opening part. He had only an incomplete recollection of the Latin hymn by Hrabanus Maurus, the ninth-century archbishop of Mainz, but soon the creative urge that he later described as having "uplifted and hounded me for eight weeks" became so overwhelming that he began to write the music even without the missing words. He cabled to Vienna for the complete text. While waiting for it to arrive, he continued to write the music and had almost finished the movement when the telegram arrived with its surprising message. To his pride and satisfaction, Mahler discovered that the missing lines once again fitted the metre and character of the music like a glove. But where could he find an apt response to the burning plea to genius of Veni, creator spiritus? How could he ensure that the second part of the symphony was a worthy counterpart and natural culmination of the first, which draws its strength from Hrabanus Maurus's grandiose hymn? Would he have to spend weeks on end rereading countless texts, as he had done in the case of the Second Symphony, only to end up writing his own words? On this occasion, Mahler fortunately did not hesitate long. After all, Goethe had translated the Latin hymn into German towards the end of his life and, moreover, he had shown Mahler the way by writing the final scene of Faust, Part II in the form of a cantata without music, an oratorio of the mind for soloists and chorus, the expression of a poetic vision so vast, so all-embracing and so universal that music alone could do it justice. Schumann had already set the entire scene, while Liszt had set the final "Chorus mysticus", but Mahler planned to treat it as an integral part of a vast symphonic organism, taking up all the motifs from Veni, creator spiritus and turning Goethe's final scene into a sublimated affirmation of his own most deep-seated beliefs. Although perfectly coherent as a whole, the Eighth Symphony comprises two halves as dissimilar as possible, a dissimilarity already clear from their words, which are drawn from two different languages, two different cultures and two historical periods remote from one another. Far from attempting to blur the distinction, Mahler did all he could to underline it, treating Veni, creator spiritus as a strictly contrapuntal Latin hymn in an almost ecclesiastical style, albeit cast in traditional first-movement sonata form. The second part, by contrast, is a sort of free fantasia, more homophonic than polyphonic, breathing the spirit of German Romanticism. Yet who would think of denying the complete sense of unity exuded by the whole? Such unity does not stem solely from the fact that both halves share the same thematic material but derives, rather, from the fact that the entire work expresses a single idea, moving forcefully and uninterruptedly towards its resplendent conclusion. The final "Chorus mysticus" is one of the most powerful passages in Mahler's entire output. Although at first blush the work might give the impression of being a vast cantata, it is in fact a symphony in every sense of the term: a symphony for (rather than with) soloists, chorus and orchestra, a symphony, moreover, in which the voices, treated in an entirely instrumental way, expound and develop the whole of the thematic material. It is also an "objective" piece, as opposed to a "subjective" one. It is the first of his works not to contain any quotations or distant and stylized echoes of any fanfare, march or landler. Above all, the Eighth Symphony is an act of faith and love, a replyto all the questions and uncertainties of the human condition. It glorifies earthly activity as much as any transcendent concerns. Faust's final redemption is a justification of ceaseless human striving since, at the end of a quest that has led him so far from asceticism and from all that is traditionally considered to lead to paradise, he is welcomed into heaven by the Mater Gloriosa herself. Even a superficial listening to this symphony reveals an undeniable enrichment in Mahler's style, and not because of the counterpoint, even though the polyphonic skill of the "Veni Creator" is perhaps unsurpassed since Bach and the masters of the Renaissance, nor because of the harmony, which shows a certain regression in relation to the previous works. It is as if Mahler wanted to carve his profession of faith in granite so that the work as a whole would possess a nearly immutable tonal stability. Mahler's real triumphs here are strictly compositional, and find expression in the systematic use of the "deviation" or "variant", which Adorno so astutely held up in opposition to the classical variation. In the Eighth Symphony, Mahler's music is characterized by continuous evolution of the thematic material, which becomes supple and mobile, always recognizable yet always different. What emerges is a sense of great unity. And indeed, looking at the overall structure of this monumental work, one has the impression that Mahler wanted to counterbalance the dissimilarities between the two texts by means of a thematic unity found in none of his other earlier or later works. The firsttheme of the second part (heard on the cellos and basses) involves a falling interval reminiscent of the first two notes of the work's initial motif (on the syllables "Ve-ni") and is followed by an ascending phrase borrowed from the "Accende lumen" theme. In much the same way, the "love theme" that marks the entry of the Mater Gloriosa harks back to the melody that enters on the winds in the fourth bar of the second part. Time and again Mahler uses thematic recall to underline the kinship between the words and ideas of Goethe's Faust and those of Veni, creator spiritus. The whole work is dominated by the opening phrase of Veni, creator spiritus, the resolution, eloquence and epigrammatical concision of which give little inkling of its extreme rhythmic complexity, with three changes of time-signature within the space of only four bars. The opening notes (E flat, B flat and A flat) have a crucial unifying roleto play - as will the notes A, G, E in Das Lied von der Erde. It is these notes, moreover, that dominate in the final apotheosis of each of the work's two parts. In the event, the performance proved to be one of the greatest triumphs in the history of music. Mahler's incomparable genius in balancing his massed forces, the evident wealth of melodic invention based on a very limited number of cells and the splendour of the two codas could not fail to enthrall the audience. Mahler had just turned 50. His whole career as a composer had up to now been an almost uninterrupted sequence of setbacks and doubtful successes, with the result that he was both astounded and moved to tears to see the entire audience screaming, stamping their feet and applauding wildly in a collective frenzy lasting some 20 minutes. Henry-Louis de La Grange