Symphony No. 4 in G Major

On the face of it, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony (1899-1900) is his most modest, tranquil symphony. Scored for a relatively small orchestra, it normally lasts less than an hour. The song that makes up the finale (originally from the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn) is a sweetly naïve depiction of a child’s idea of Heaven, while the first movement’s innocent neo-classicism and the “Scherzo”’s deliciously sinister nocturnal dance (featuring a weirdly re-tuned solo violin) all appear to confirm the idea that the Fourth Symphony is an affectionate depiction of childhood—or at least of childhood as most of us would like to remember it. That seems to have been what Mahler had in mind when he began work on the symphony, but apparently the music had other ideas. The idyllic pastoral scene, he confessed, kept turning into a forest with “mysteries and horrors”. Truly nightmarish elements may be rare, but there are certainly shadows: a pre-echo of the Fifth Symphony’s grim “Funeral March” in the first movement, flashes of genuine alarm in the “Scherzo,” elegiac sadness in the “Adagio” third movement (“Ruhevoll”), and hints in the song finale that all is not right in the child singer’s Heaven. Whatever the case, the way the symphony grows toward the song finale (composed first) is superb. And the ending is very moving, however you choose to read it.