The ten symphonies of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) have sometimes been likened to a great autobiographical novel, each symphony constituting a chapter in itself while at the same time being an integral part of an unfolding narrative. Within this narrative flow, the fourth symphony (1899-1900) represents a magical pool of tranquility. Mahler drew on various sources in his symphony, one of them being Das himmlische Leben (1892). He originally intended this to be an independent song, but then had ideas of making it the finale of his giant third symphony before ultimately transferring it to his fourth. The song is a naïve vision of the joys of heaven seen through the eyes of a child; the symphony is, as a result, Mahler's most optimistic and relaxed. Here the work is presented by the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Leif Segerstam.

Left unfinished at the death of the composer, Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony has exerted an enormous fascination on musicologists as well as musicians – a kind of Holy Grail of 20th-century music. Recognized as an intensely personal work, it was initially consigned to respectful oblivion, but over the years, Alma Mahler, the composer’s widow, released more and more of Mahler’s sketches for publication, and gradually it became clear that he had in fact bequeathed an entire five-movement symphony in short score (i.e. written on three or four staves). Of this, nearly half had reached the stage of a draft orchestration, while the rest contained indications of the intended instrumentation.

If you can get past the 1940s monaural sound (and if you are not already familiar with this performance, you will get a shock). This is the gentlest, most right sounding rendition I have ever heard. The tempi are uncommonly brisk, though they never sound that way. The third movement has never sounded more beautiful. Halban is perfect in the finale. Walter passed away before he could record this work in stereo. His later performances were very different and I'm still not sure whether or not his later slower tempos and even greater expression were an improvement.

Mahler's First Symphony was originally conceived as a tone poem in two parts. Loosely based on Jean Paul's novel Titan, the structure was this: Part I: "From the Days of Youth," Music of Flowers, Fruit and Thorn – 1. Spring and No End; 2. Flowers; 3. In Full Sail; Part II: "The Human Comedy" – 4. "Stranded!" Funeral March in the Style of Callot; 5. D'all Inferno al'Paradiso (From Hell to Heaven). These titles were accompanied by more extensive programs describing the metaphorical content of each movement. In Jean Paul's Titan we have a youth gifted with a burning artistic desire that the world has no use for, and who, finding no outlet or ability to adapt, gives way to despair and suicide. Mahler apparently saw himself in this figure, as he described this work as autobiographical in a very loose sense. On the other hand the music, some of which Mahler actually accumulated from various earlier works, contradicts this program in so many ways, especially in the triumphant conclusion, that Mahler later withdrew it. He eventually came to scorn the application of specific programs to his symphonies in general.

Gustav Mahlers 8th Symphony breaks the boundaries of the symphonic form in a world-embracing gesture. Riccardo Chailly is one of the staunchest performers of this work, and therefore it seemed appropriate in many ways that he chose this work for his inaugural concert as Claudio Abbados successor and new music director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The artistic statement was combined with a deeply personal conviction: it should be a 'tribute to Claudio', the highly esteemed friend and colleague to whom Chailly, as he emphasizes, owes very much. On 12 August 2016, Claudio Abbados unfinished Mahler cycle with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was completed in a breathtaking performance of the Mahler 8th, simultaneously heralding in a new era in Lucerne.

In Gustav Mahler's first four symphonies many of the themes originate in his own settings of folk poems from the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn). A case in point, Symphony No. 4 is built around a single song, Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life) which Mahler had composed some eight years earlier, in 1892. The song presents a child's vision of Heaven and is hinted at throughout the first three movements. In the fourth, marked ‘Sehr behaglich’ (Very comfortably), the song is heard in full from a solo soprano instructed by Mahler to sing: ‘with serene, childlike expression; completely without parody!’

"Bernstein stamps his outsize personality on every bar and regularly has you convinced it is Mahler's own" (Gramophone). Filmed on tour at Berlin's Philharmonie, this account of the valedictory Ninth Symphony is an intense interpretation, expressing Bernstein's conviction that modern man had at last caught up with the message encoded in Mahler's last completed work. Having made his famous 1966 studio recording of "Das Lied vin der Erde" in Vienna, Bernstein re-recorded this in Israel with the same searing subjectivity. René Kollo draws on the voice of a great Wagner tenor, while Christa Ludwig, the greatest exponent of the contralto songs at the time, is unbearably poignant in the final movement's fusion of elation and sadness.

"Bernstein stamps his outsize personality on every bar and regularly has you convinced it is Mahler's own" (Gramophone). Leonard Bernstein, whose performances of the Seventh were instrumental in pushing the woek towards mainstream status, conducts it here with white-hot communicative power. When he prepared the huge "Symphony of a Thousand" with the Vienna Philharmonic for the 1975 Salzburg Festival there had been only one previous Austrian performance. The DVD encompasses the exultancy of the opening movement, Mahler's setting of the final scene from Goethe's Faust, Bernstein drives the music to the final redemptive blaze of glory.

"Bernstein stamps his outsize personality on every bar and regularly has you convinced it is Mahler's own" (Gramophone). Bernstein's youthful, urgent conducting of the Fourth takes a refreshing slant on the symphony's classical temper, while in the Fifth he coaxes from the Vienna Philharmonic a detailed response to the work's tragic beginning and triumphant conclusion. The reverie of the Adagietto is uniquely intense in this performance. Bernstein's thrilling traversal of the epic Sixth Symphony comes from the end of his Mahler cycle in Vienna, during which the conductor and his orchestra forged an unbreakable bond.

"Bernstein stamps his outsize personality on every bar and regularly has you convinced it is Mahler's own" (Gramophone). Beginning with the First Symphony, Bernstein reveals Mahler's position at the hinge of modernism, while emphasizing his emotional extremism. The uplifting Second "Resurrection" Symphony, with which Bernstein had an especially long and close association, is recorded here in a historic performance from 1973, set in the Romanesque splendour of Ely Cathedral. In the Third, Bernstein encompasses the symphony's spiritual panorama like no other conductor - with the Vienna Philharmonic players alive to every nuance.

Mahler considered The Song of the Earth his most personal work, and indeed it is one of his greatest and most moving. Its six sections, sung alternately by the mezzo-soprano and tenor, are set to seven poems from The Chinese Flute, a collection of Chinese lyrics translated into German by Hans Bethge, which echo Mahler's love of nature and contrast the earth's renewal each spring with the transience of human life. Composed after he lost his beloved 4-year-old daughter and was diagnosed with a serious heart ailment, the music encompasses heart-rending anguish and sublime ecstasy; conceived in the shadow of death, it is suffused with a sense of sorrowful, reluctant leave-taking finally transformed into resigned renunciation.

For Gustav Mahler, composing his early symphonies meant „building a world”. His Ninth, however, seems more concerned with the deconstruction of this world – a look back, a long farewell. In the draft of his score, he noted words like „O youth! Vanished! O love! Blown away!“. In 1909, his idyllic world was destroyed, having been diagnosed with a heart valve defect two years earlier – a disease that would ultimately lead to his death.

An extraordinary program for an extraordinary night: The Berliner Philharmoniker celebrates the final day of the 20th Century with Grand Finales in the first part and heralds the leap into the 21st Century with an explosion of sparkling music pieces in the second half of the program. For the Grand Finales, maestro Claudio Abbado conducts masterpieces including Beethoven's finale of the 7th symphony, excerpts from Stravinsky's "Feuervogel" and the final movement of Mahler's 5th Symphony. In the famous Finale of Arnold Sch+Ýnberg's "Gurrelieder", the internationally renowned actor Klaus Maria Brandauer plays a leading role.

Originally released in 1966, Bernard Haitink's vivid recording of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 in D minor is coupled here with a 1973 performance of Das klagende Lied; since these are among the least performed and least familiar works in Mahler's catalog, the pairing is mutually beneficial to each, and listeners who have neither in their collections would do well to consider snapping up this affordable set. Perhaps the only flaw should be mentioned up front: though virtually no tape hiss is audible, there is a bit of an acoustic "vacuum" around the sound of the musicians, suggesting that the analog masters have been cleaned up a bit too efficiently and some resonance seems lost.

Given the depth, range and quality of the Deutsche Grammophon catalogue, it’s hardly been difficult to put together another anthology of great recordings and great artists. The structure is as before – here are 53 original albums (including three double-sets), featuring the great names of Deutsche Grammophon’s recording history, presented, once more, in alphabetical order of artist. Claudio Abbado leads off with a complete Carmen and Krystian Zimerman rounds off with his memorable account of the Chopin Ballades.