Mahler Symphonie No.4
Gustav Mahler’s music is that music which we all make a little bit our own when we listen to it. The Austro-Bohemian composer knew how to express his inner world by means of his harmonies. And he did so by speaking of the universal themes that occupy ordinary people: life, childhood, love, nature or death. Gustav Mahler’s 4th Symphony, as well as the song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), is based on Arnim and Brentano’s collection of children’s stories of the same name. The fantasy that emanates from this piece of literature finds in Mahler a natural catalyst, who manages, with each musical impulse, articulation, nuance, glissando, harmonic or any other of the myriad of details that inhabit his scores, to transport us to the dreamy and magical world of children’s stories, thus developing a fragile balance between utter fiction and overwhelming reality. With his 4th Symphony, Mahler brings to an end his so-called Wunderhorn period, marked by the reverie and imagination which can be found in such tales.
