Mahler Symphony No.5
Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra; Sir Donald Runnicles
Reference Recordings FR-763SACD (referencerecordings.com/recording/mahler-symphony-no-5)
The tremendous emotional range in Gustav Mahler’s sprawling, five-movement Symphony No.5 exemplifies his credo, as he famously told Sibelius, that “a symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything.” Actually, the “everything” Mahler “embraced” in his symphonies included all the angst and turmoil frequently occurring within his own, inner “world.” The Fifth’s extreme emotive trajectory from agony to joy surely mirrored a marked improvement in Mahler’s circumstances. It was completed in 1902, the year he married Alma after recovering from a life-threatening intestinal hemorrhage the year before, still enjoying his recent appointment as artistic director of the Vienna Court Opera.
The opening funereal Trauermarsch leads to the second movement, marked Stürmisch bewegt. Mit grösster Vehemenz (Stormily agitated. With great vehemence). Mahler described the rustic Scherzo, genial and sometimes raucous, as “mankind in the full brightness of day, at the zenith of life.” The luminous, transcendent Adagietto, over-familiar since its use in the film Death in Venice, nevertheless tugs the heartstrings. The jocular Rondo-Finale ends this darkness-to-light masterwork with a blaze of triumph.
This richly-coloured, dramatically energized performance was recorded at the 2024 Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming with festival artistic director Donald Runnicles leading the large festival orchestra. The resplendent brass section, including seven horns, powered the symphony’s multiple grand climaxes while Runnicles treated Mahler’s reflective interludes, the Adagietto chief among them, with loving care. It’s a welcome new addition to the roster of superb recorded Mahler Fifths.
