Gustav Mahler
Sinfonia n° 5

The music of Gustav Mahler is a monument of indestructible and timeless beauty, whose substance is made up of the anxieties that stir the human soul. In his compositions, Mahler has uniquely outlined despair, pain, resignation, but also the comfort of hope. His is, therefore, a profound, complex, and poetic musical design, which features multiple characteristics still relevant today.

The Fifth Symphony was composed between 1901 and 1902 during a very important period for Mahler, as he met and married Alma Schindler at that time. The composition was thus a witness to a turning point in the composer's private life, but it also represents a change in artistic terms. In fact, this work stands out in Mahler's corpus because it closes the cycle of the "Wunderhorn Symphonies," opening a new one that transitions the composer from vocal symphony to instrumental symphony. The reasons that led Mahler to this choice apparently stem from his encounter with the poems of Friedrick Rückert, to whom he dedicated a cycle of lieder, which prompted him to conceive of an autonomous value for the vocal genre as opposed to the instrumental one, which had previously been intertwined.

Another characteristic of the composition, which will be common to the subsequent symphonies, is the division into three parts. These find a further subdivision into five movements. The opening is entrusted to a somber "Funeral March" (Trauermarsch. In gemessenem Schritt. Streng. Wie ein Kondukt) made dark and restless by the progress of the brass delicately wrapped by the strings. You can say anything about this movement except that it is static, given the alternation of the march's tempos with melodic patterns guided by the strings now slow, now vehement. Extraordinary is the bitter beauty of these passages capable of evoking death thanks to a kind of constant antinomy between the trumpet calls and the seductive strings. This walk in the gray mists of the soul finds continuation in the outbursts, the power, the stormy agitation, the stormy sea of the second movement: Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz ("stormily agitated and with the greatest vehemence"). After an excited introduction, a theme arises that is subtly melancholic, to which it is impossible not to surrender. But it is a deceptive calm destined to be suppressed again by the vehemence of the orchestra as a whole. The walk continues, then, over a thread suspended over a chasm with the wind constantly disturbing a balance never really reached. In the central part of the symphony, we find the Scherzo, Kräftig, nicht zu schnell, where the strength and vitality of the dance prevail. An only seemingly lighthearted parenthesis, because a subtle, mysterious, and decadent underlying tension can be felt from time to time in the texture of the strings, never tamed, never extinguished, always lurking.

The third and final section is opened by the Adagietto: Sehr langsam, for harp and strings, which many will know as the central theme of Luchino Visconti's film "Death in Venice." Sweetness, spirituality, lyricism are typical traits of many Mahlerian atmospheres, and certainly the Adagietto of the Fifth Symphony is one of the highest expressions of his musical poetry. The nuances of the suggestions it is capable of giving are infinite, but above all, there prevails a sense of consolation, softly painted by superb, delicate, and enveloping strings. After this sublime page, the closure of the work is entrusted to the Rondo-Finale: Allegro, which softens and disperses in a progressive and powerful crescendo of the orchestra the clouds thickened during the listening of the previous movements, which, however, find more than a hint in this finale.

At the end of the listening, there is nothing left to do but ascertain that Mahler's Fifth, in addition to being a musical heritage of humanity, simultaneously represents a profound, cathartic and shocking experience. It's a listening that leaves deep marks, capable of intensely changing the soul of those who love to undertake such intense inner journeys.