Symphony No. 5 in C‑Sharp Minor

With his Fifth Symphony (1901-02), Mahler finally casts aside all verbal props (programs, titles, sung texts) and lets the music speak for itself. Granted, he did call the first movement “Funeral March”, but one hardly needs the label: Death is presented in spectacular, macabre pomp, then in melancholy desolation, with hints of a Jewish folk lament. A turbulent allegro (“Stürmisch bewegt”) strives to escape this oppressive vision, touching on a moment of hymnic splendour before finally collapsing back into the darkness of the first movement. Musicians and commentators have argued back and forth about what happens next: a vigorous, ultimately manic, waltz-like ”Scherzo” bursts onto the scene like a firework display at a wake—how does this relate to what we heard earlier? But Mahler was keenly aware that life was full of puzzles and paradoxes, and the musical thread remains continuous. After the frenetic conclusion of the ”Scherzo” comes the famous “Adagietto” for strings and harp, which Mahler conceived as a love song without words for his new wife, Alma. From this emerges a muscular fugal “Rondo-Finale”, which glances back at previous movements and culminates in a triumphant return of the hymn from the second, now sustained through to the resolutely major-key ending. But is this indeed triumph? Do unresolved tensions still persist? Questions like that are what make Mahler’s vision so modern, and so endlessly fascinating.