Czech Philharmonic • Toronto

The years 1878–1880 tend to be called Antonín Dvořák’s “Slavonic period” because it was especially at that time that he took Slavic folk music as his point of departure. It was also during those three years that he created such highly successful compositions as his Serenade for Winds, three Slavonic Rhapsodies, the Czech Suite, the Symphony No. 6, the first set of Slavonic Dances, Gypsy Melodies, and a number of piano compositions. In those days, a Slavonic “tone” was in demand in Czech-speaking territory for reasons of patriotism and in a European context to satisfy the desire for uniqueness and “exoticism”. One of Dvořák’s masterpieces, not limited to the context of his Slavonic period, is undoubtedly his Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53, written in Sychrov in the summer of 1879.

Naturally, the composer was pleased by the interest of Simrock’s Berlin publishing house in another work in a “Slavonic vein”. At the time, Dvořák was maturing as a composer, and he aspired to attempt virtuosity with inventive content. Like many of his contemporaries and predecessors beginning with Beethoven, Dvořák had a particular violin virtuoso in mind for the solo part, in his case Joseph Joachim, to whom he dedicated the concerto. In the spring of 1880, Dvořák even visited Joachim in Berlin and consulted on the work with him. The virtuoso violinist had reservations about certain passages that he regarded as being too difficult, and in his judgment the orchestration was too thick in places. That does not mean, however, that he did not express praise for the concerto. Dvořák made changes to the work at the suggestion of the violin virtuoso. He finished the last revisions in October 1882.

Afterwards, it became clear that Joseph Joachim would not give the concerto’s premiere, so Dvořák entrusted the first performance to the 26-year-old violin virtuoso František Ondříček. The premiere took place on 14 October 1883 at Žofín Palace accompanied by the Orchestra of the National Theatre under the baton of Mořic Anger. The performance was an extraordinary success. On his later tours, Ondříček helped bring Dvořák’s Violin Concerto to stages around the world, where it is still heard today.

The works of Gustav Mahler are inseparable from his relationship with nature. He needed nature and sought it out, expecting it to provide him with “the basic themes and rhythms of his art”, and he compared himself with a musical instrument played by “the spirit of the world, the source of all being.” Just by looking at photographs of the places where he drew energy for composing, we can hardly avoid the impression that there is an intrinsic link between those natural surroundings and the composer’s music. Practical reasons also played a part; Mahler the conductor, always more than 100% devoted his work, could only find the peace and concentration he needed for composing during the summer holiday.

The composer began writing his Fifth Symphony in the summer of 1901 in the Austrian village Maiernigg beside Lake Wörth (Wörthersee), where he had a villa built along with a “hermit’s hut” for composing. By then, he was already in his fifth year at the helm of one of Europe’s most prestigious cultural institutions, the Court Opera in Vienna. This time, however, besides rest, he also needed to recover his health; in February he had nearly died of severe hemorrhoidal bleeding, and his life was saved by a prompt surgical procedure: “As I wavered at the boundary between life and death, I was wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to be done with it right away because everyone ends up there eventually”, he wrote later on.

Death seems to have been at Mahler’s heels from his childhood—seven of his twelve younger siblings did not live to the age of two, his brother Ernst died at age 13, and in 1895 Otto committed suicide at the age of 21. Four years later, the composer buried both of his parents and his younger sister Poldi. Thus, we are not surprised by the unusual number of funeral marches in his works, nor is this the first time that entirely contrasting music came into being in an idyllic environment: the last song of the collection The Youth’s Magic Horn titled The Drummer Boy, three of his Kindertotenlieder, four more songs to texts by Rückert, and the first two movements of a new symphony. “Their content is terribly sad, and I suffered greatly having to write them; I also suffer at the thought that the world shall have to listen to them one day”, he told his devoted friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner (1858–1921). About his symphony, he further noted that it would be “in accordance with all rules, in four movements, each being independent and self-contained, held together only by a similar mood.” Bach’s counterpoint became another important source of inspiration: “Bach contains all of life in its embryonic forms, united as the world is in God. There exists no mightier counterpoint”, he declared; he was spending up to several hours a day studying polyphony.

Suddenly, however, the composer’s life faced a disruption on a cosmic scale. Who knows how the symphony might have turned out if on 7 November 1901 he had not made the acquaintance of an enchanting, musically talented, and undoubtedly very charismatic woman named Alma Schindler (1879–1964) at a friendly gathering. She instantly won over Gustav with her directness, and she wrote in her diary: “That fellow is made of pure oxygen. Whoever gets close to him will burn up.” They were betrothed in December, Alma became pregnant in January, and the wedding took place on 9 March 1902 at Vienna’s Karlskirche in the presence of a small group of family and friends. The couple then embarked on a happy yet complicated period of their lives…

That summer in Maiernigg, Mahler composed the song Liebst du um Schönheit (If you love for beauty) for his wife, and he inserted into his Fifth Symphony one of his most intense and popular slow movements, the Adagietto. The symphony’s premiere took place on 18 October 1904 in Cologne under the composer’s baton. Audience members whistled at the concert to show their disapproval, and as an example of one of the many negative reviews, we can quote Hermann Kipper, according to whom the first movement was too long and the second movement contained many “unmusical” passages full of “appalling cacophony”; according to him, the composer’s brain “finds itself in a constant state of confusion.” After the premiere, Mahler commented laconically: “No one understood it. I wish I could conduct the premiere 50 years after my death.” The symphony was again unsuccessful the following year at performances in Dresden, Berlin, and Prague, where it was played on 2 March 1905 by the orchestra of the New German Theatre (now the State Opera) led by the composer and conductor Leo Blech (1871–1958). The symphony got its first truly warm reception on American soil on 24 March 1905, when Frank Van der Stucken conducted the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Performances followed in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, making Mahler’s music increasingly familiar in American circles before the composer himself came there in 1907.

Within the composer’s oeuvre, the Fifth Symphony represents a turning point. Although there continue to be thematic connections with his songs, we no longer find a vocal component in Mahler’s orchestral works with the exceptions of the Eighth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde. Part I of the approximately 60-minute work consists of two dark, gloomy movements. First, we hear the famous trumpet fanfare announcing death and ushering in a funeral march. The calm, slow motion illuminated by the woodwinds playing a theme in the major mode is disrupted by a wildly dramatic section. Heaviness and dense orchestral sound alternate with introspective passages that reflect upon feelings of loss. The music extinguishes itself nearly in a state of despair, whereupon the next movement breaks forth vehemently (Moving stormily), in which a cantabile theme later appears, accompanied by sobbing winds. The two main ideas are later merged into a triumphant stream of brass, but once again the music leads us back into a state of tense anxiety.

Part II of the symphony consists Mahler’s vast Scherzo. Despite the music’s dance-like character and the absence of the composer’s usual irony, shadows of sadness, again entrusted to the winds, flit past us in this movement as well. Part III of the symphony opens with the intimate Adagietto for strings, made especially famous by Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice. The soothing music seems to disperse any the clouds of distress. Then in the bucolic, unrestrained finale, the composer broadly develops several themes, the third of which then leads to a magnificent brass chorale.