Mahler's Adagietto & How the Gold Was Won.

Gustav Mahler’s gorgeous Adagietto is the fourth movement of his five movement Symphony No. 5 The fourth movement is arguably Mahler's most famous single piece of music, and is the most frequently performed extract from Mahler's works. Mahler was probably right when he wished he could conduct his Fifth Symphony 50 years after his death when it would be more appreciated. For many years only the Adagietto - sans the other four movements of the symphony was performed by orchestras around the world, too afraid that audiences wouldn't take to an entire Mahler Symphonic work. It is written for harp and strings.

Because Mahler added the tempo marking sehr langsam (very slowly) to the Adagietto many 20th century conductors took the movement well over its normal duration, in some cases over eleven minutes (11'43" in a recording by Eliahu Inbal, 11'52" in a recording by Herbert von Karajan, and 11'55 in a recording by Claudio Abbado). However in recent years the trend moved away from extreme tempi. Simon Rattle conducts clocks in at just over nine and a half minutes.



The Adagietto was also conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York on 8 June 1968, the day of the burial of Robert Kennedy. Sarah Brightman recorded an interesting adaptation of on her Symphony Album called Schwere Träume which means “heavy dreams”



It was used in the film Death in Venice and is about to be covered on British guitarist Jeff Beck’s new album, Emotion & Commotion. Given Beck’s integral role in the development of progressive rock and his treatment of Ravel’s Bolero back in the day – Beck’s Bolero – it is sure to be a memorable take on the work. You may not be interested in Jeff Beck, but here’s a tidbit – he’s the inspiration for Christopher Guest’s character Nigel Tufnel in This is Spinal Tap.



And of course for all Canadians, last night, Mahler (as always) was as good as GOLD as Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Ilderton, ON chose to skate their final program to this most moving piece of music. Here they are with the same program at the Canadian Nationals last month.

Lovely