Адажието на Густав Малер от Симфония №5

В наближаващата дата – 14 Февруари, Ден на влюбените, нека да си припомним как творецът изразява своята обич – Адажието на Густав Малер от Симфония №5.

The music of Gustav Mahler reflects the breadth of his experience in the rapidly-changing world of the fin-de-siècle: both geographically — from a Bohemian village to glittering world capitals — and artistically — as poet, conductor, and composer. It also reflects the depth of his interior experience: his passions, his sufferings, and his ongoing sense of being an outsider. To realize his artistic vision, Mahler filled his symphonic worlds with recurring fragments of tunes and rhythms from his past, and he embraced “low” musical traditions as part of the “elevated” symphonic tradition in a way that many listeners found challenging, even grotesque, upon first hearing.

The fourth movement may be Mahler’s most famous composition and is the most frequently performed of his works. It lasts for approximately 10 minutes, and Mahler’s instruction is sehr langsam (very slowly). Mahler and Mengelberg played it in about 7 minutes.^[4] Some conductors have taken tempos that extend it to nearly 12 minutes (viz. recordings by Eliahu Inbal, Herbert von Karajan, and Claudio Abbado), while Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra performed it in 9½ minutes. Bernstein also briefly discusses this section along with the opening bars of the 2nd movement in his Charles Eliot Norton lectures from 1973.