Making any definitive selection of the best music of that great Romantic composer Gustav Mahler is both easy – and, conversely, quite the challenge.
Easy, perhaps, because, on paper at least, Mahler‘s output is relatively small. Nine and a half symphonies, an orchestral song cycle, several further song cycles, a cantata and a piano quartet about cover it. And yet, in terms of both its emotional impact, and its influence on the direction of late 19th and early 20th century classical music, Mahler’s musical output is huge.
Beautifully conjuring up the nature and fresh air of Mahler’s much-loved Alpine landscapes, his work also encompasses everything from marching bands to folk tunes (not for nothing did he once remark to his very different contemporary Jean Sibelius that ‘a symphony must be like the world… it must embrace everything.” That’s the kind of outlook that makes it no surprise that another with similarly grand visions, the great Leonard Bernstein, should be such a key figure in the Mahler renaissance of the 1960s.
Here are six works to start you on a long and, we’re confident, infinitely rewarding Mahler journey.
The best of Mahler: the early symphonies
Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection’ (1888-94)
One of the most dramatic openings of any symphony – baleful scurryings from cellos and basses launching a work of extraordinary contrasts.
The Second was the first Mahler symphony to deploy the human voice (both vocal soloists and a choir), a powerful technique to which he would return on several occasions. Not that you would know this from the ‘Resurrection’s first three movements. These begin with a menacing funeral march (this is, in fact, the ‘hero’ of the First Symphony being carried to his grave). Then come a delicate Ländler and a Scherzo that incorporates Jewish folk music.
In the fourth movement (‘Urlicht’, meaning ‘Primal light’), the symphony’s hero responds to a call from God. Then comes the finale, a 30-minute emotional rollercoaster in which our hero faces the Day of Judgement.
The Second is a huge and hugely captivating symphony, and features many of Mahler’s most showstopping moments. A deeply spiritual experience, and one of the very finest entries in the symphonic canon.
Recommended recording: Bamberg Chorus & Symphony Orchestra/Jonathan Nott Tudor 7158 (2 discs)
Symphony No. 3 (1894-96)
That quote that Mahler made to Sibelius, about the symphony being like the world and embracing everything? Of all his works, it’s probably the massive, dramatic, slow-burning and nature-evoking Third Symphony that comes closest to embodying this credo in sound.
From a modern perspective, it’s easy to see the Third as having some deep ecological message. Its huge (35 minutes!) opening movement is one long, lush, sensuous depiction of the natural world awakening: a stirring into life from the primeval swamp.
This is music of great sensuality, with an ‘atmosphere of brooding summer midday heat’ where ‘all life is suspended, and the sun-drenched air trembles and vibrates’. In its sensory-overloading depiction of nature’s most primeval forces, the first movement of the Third somewhat resembles that other great turn-of-the-century work, the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune by Claude Debussy.
After that monumental first movement, for a while the symphony acquires a smaller, though no less captivating scale. Flowers sway languidly in the meadows (second movement), birds and beasts frolic in the forest (third movement). The fourth movement brings humankind into the picture, and with it a sense of introspection. Things are rounded off movingly, almost overwhelmingly, in the finale, a pantheistic love song to all of creation.
Best recording: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra et al/Bernard Haitink BR Klassik 900149
Best of Mahler: middle period
Rückert Lieder (1901-04)
This small but exquisite collection of five songs features Mahler’s settings of poems by German Romantic poet Friedrich Rückert. Some of Mahler’s most sublime songs are included here, most particularly the twilight atmosphere of ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ (‘I am lost to the world’).
Then there is ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’ (‘If you love for beauty’), composed in 1902, the year of Mahler’s marriage to Alma Schindler. All the other Rückert Lieder were composed during the very productive summer of 1901, when Mahler also set down two movements of the Fifth Symphony.
Song cycle, or collection of songs? The latter, really, as singers may sing them in whichever order they wish. There is a kind of journey here, though: we travel from the scents of blossom in spring, via a meditation on inwardness and withdrawing from the world, and onto a kind of dark of the soul.
Recommended recording: Janet Baker; New Philharmonia Orchestra/Sir John Barbirolli EMI 566 9812
Symphony No. 6, ‘Tragic’ (1903-04)
Lean and purposeful, the ‘Tragic’ launches with an implacable march and ends with a finale punctuated with three hammer blows of ‘fate’. It made a similarly weighty impression at its premiere, which took place in Essen, Germany on 27 May 1906.
A young composer by the name of Alban Berg was at that performance, and what he heard made a strong impression on him. Recognised that he had been privy to the unveiling of a major new work, Berg compared the ‘Tragic’ to Beethoven, describing it as ‘the only Sixth – despite the Pastoral’.
You need a huge orchestra to perform the Sixth. Among others, Mahler calls for four flutes, oboes and bassoons apiece; cymbals, triangle and cowballs; and the infamous hammer that has its big moment in the finale.
There are two enigmas about the Sixth. The first is the order of the two inner movements, a lyrical Andante and a martial Scherzo which takes up the dark, relentless tread established by the opening Allegro. The second is why Mahler should have composed this unambiguously lugubrious and doom-laden work during what was, in fact, a happy and stable period of his life.
Recommended recording:San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson ThomasSan Francisco Symphony 821936-0001-2
Best of Mahler: late period
Das Lied von der Erde (1908-09)
A despairing yet blissful hymn to earthly life, these settings of ancient Chinese poems is one of Mahler’s most powerful song cycles for solo voices and orchestra. Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) consists of six songs for two singers – per Mahler’s specifications, a tenor and an alto (or, if the latter is not an option, for tenor and a baritone).
We mentioned that the tragic Sixth was composed during a happy period in Mahler’s life. The reverse, if anything, holds true here. Das Lied von der Erde was composed immediately after a very painful period. Anti-Jewish feeling forced Mahler to resign his role as director of the Vienna Court Opera; his eldest daughter Maria died from diphtheria and scarlet fever; and the composer himself was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect.
In contrast, or as a complement, to this atmosphere of alienation and loss, the songs that make up Das Lied deal with timeless themes: living, farewells, salvation. Bernstein, no less, described it as Mahler’s ‘greatest symphony’.
Recommended recording:Kathleen Ferrier, Julius Patzak; Vienna PO/Bruno WalterAlto ALC 1120
Symphony No. 9 (1909-10)
Mahler’s last completed symphony seems to express the complex feelings of someone facing the end of their life, shot through with fear.
It is an intensely emotional and shattering work. ‘I have once more played through Mahler’s Ninth. ‘The first movement is the most glorious he ever wrote,’ said Alban Berg. ‘It expresses an extraordinary love of the earth, for Nature. The longing to live on it in peace, to enjoy it completely, to the very heart of one’s being, before death comes, as irresistibly it does.’
The great Herbert von Karajan didn’t get on with all of Mahler’s symphonies, but he did set down a landmark recording of the Ninth. ‘It is music coming from another world, it is coming from eternity,’ Karajan noted. Bernstein, meanwhile, said of the Ninth: ‘It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate … in ceasing, we lose it all. But in Mahler’s ceasing, we have gained everything.’
- Karajan and Bernstein both finished strongly in our list of the 20 greatest conductors of all time
When we asked 151 of the world’s leading conductors to vote for the greatest symphony of all time, Mahler 9 came in a hugely impressive fourth place. It’s clearly earned its place in this list.
Recommended recording: Philharmonia/Esa-Pekka Salonen Signum SGCD 188