Claudio Abbado - Gustav Mahler: Symphony No.5 In C-Sharp Minor (Remastered) (1981/2017) [Hi-Res]

Die 5. Sinfonie Gustav Mahlers ließ den Komponisten nach der Uraufführung in Hamburg 1905 verzweifeln. "Die Fünfte ist ein verfluchtes Werk. Niemand capiert sie", schrieb er in sein Tagebuch. Heute gehört sie zu seinen beliebtesten und bekanntesten Sinfonien, woran sicher auch die ausgiebige Verwendung des Adagietto in Viscontis Film "Tod in Venedig" einen Anteil hat. Der italienische Dirigent Claudio Abbado fühlte sich der Musik Gustav Mahlers Zeit seines Lebens verbunden. Diese Einspielung mit dem Chicago Symphony Orchestra entstand 1980 in Orchestra Hall in Chicago.

Mahler composed his Fifth Symphony in 1901-02 and conducted the first performance in Cologne on October 18, 1904. The score calls for four flutes and two piccolos, three oboes and english horn, three clarinets and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, six horns, four trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, harp, bass drum, cymbals, small bass drum, snare drum, glockenspiel, slapstick, tam- tam, triangle, and strings. Performance time is approximately seventy-two minutes.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first subscription concert performances of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony were given at Orchestra Hall on March 22 and 23, 1907, with Frederick Stock conducting. Our most recent subscription concert performance was given on May 30, 2006, with Daniel Barenboim conducting. The Orchestra first performed the Adagietto movement at the Ravinia Festival on July 6, 1963, with Aaron Copland conducting. The Orchestra first performed the complete symphony at Ravinia on July 20, 1978, with Lawrence Foster conducting, and most recently on July 6, 2007, with James Conlon conducting.

The lone trumpet call that opens this symphony launches a whole new chapter in Mahler’s music. Gone is the picturesque world of the first four symphonies—music inspired by folk tales and song, music that calls on the human voice and is explained by the written word. With the Fifth Symphony, as Bruno Walter put it, Mahler “is now aiming to write music as a musician.” Walter had nothing against the earlier works; in fact, he was one of the first serious musicians to understand and to conduct those pieces long before it was fashionable to champion the composer’s cause. Walter simply identified what other writers since have reemphasized: the unforeseen switch to an exclusively instrumental symphonic style, producing music, in Symphonies 5 through 7, that needs no programmatic discussion. …

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Claudio Abbado, conductor

Digitally remastered