大象传媒

Donald Macleod explores the music and life of Gustav Mahler. Today, how his profound love of the natural world seeped into almost everything he wrote.

鈥淚t always seems strange to me that most people, when they talk about nature, can think only of flowers, little birds, forest fragrance, and so on. No one mentions the god Dionysus or the great Pan. There, now you have an idea of how I make music 鈥� always and everywhere, only the sound of nature!鈥� That was Mahler writing to a friend shortly after he had finished work on his Third Symphony, and he wasn鈥檛 just expressing himself figuratively. He seemed to wrest his music from the natural scenery that provided his favourite composing environments 鈥� like the rolling meadows and angular mountain peaks surrounding Toblach, high up in the Dolomites, where he composed Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth Symphony, and embarked on what was to be the unfinished Tenth.

Lieder und ges盲nge aus Jugendzeit (Abl枚sung im Sommer)
Karita Mattila, soprano
Ilmo Ranta, piano

Symphony No 3 (3rd movement, Comodo)
London Symphony Orchestra
Jascha Horenstein, conductor

Das Lied von der Erde (6. Der Abschied)
Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo soprano
Berlin Philharmonic
Carlo Maria Giulini, conductor

Produced by Chris Barstow for 大象传媒 Wales