Gustav Mahler

Mahler called Das Lied von der Erde a symphony for voices and orchestra. Its six movements set German adaptations of Chinese poems, moving between exuberant public gestures and more solitary reflections on nature and...

Mahler's First Symphony developed from an initially more explicitly programmatic, five-movement work into the familiar four-movement score. It draws on his own songs and places a minor-key version of a familiar round...

Mahler left his Tenth as a five-movement project in varying states of completion. The opening Adagio is far more fully worked out than most of what follows. Performances of all five movements therefore depend on...

Mahler's Second Symphony begins with a large funeral movement and eventually answers it with voices. Dance-like recollection and a restless scherzo precede the intimate song Urlicht and the expansive choral finale....

Mahler's Third expands the symphony into six movements with an unusually large first movement and a slow finale. Instrumental dances and nature-like calls lead to settings of Nietzsche and a Wunderhorn poem for solo...

Mahler built his Fourth Symphony around a pre-existing song that presents a child's vision of heavenly life. The soprano enters only in the finale, after three instrumental movements have prepared its musical world....

Mahler's Fifth returns to an entirely instrumental symphonic design after works that used voices. Its five movements are grouped into three larger parts, beginning with a trumpet-led funeral march and moving through...

Mahler's Sixth combines a forceful march character with an exceptionally large finale. Cowbells and more distant orchestral colors interrupt the denser writing, while hammer strokes mark major events near the work's...

Mahler placed two movements titled Nachtmusik around a central scherzo, creating a five-movement symphony with contrasting kinds of night music at its centre. The second Nachtmusik introduces guitar and mandolin into...

Mahler's Eighth brings voices to the center of its entire two-part design. A Latin hymn invoking the creative spirit is paired with the closing scene of Goethe's Faust, joining texts from very different periods....

Mahler's Ninth surrounds two more animated middle movements with exceptionally spacious outer movements. Dance rhythms become unsettled in the Landler, while the Rondo-Burleske uses tightly interwoven lines and sharp...