Gustav Mahler (Born on July 7, 1860) A Symphonic Survey

by Maureen Buja  July 7th, 2026

As you make your way around the musical world, you start with the easy ones – a bit of Haydn, some Mozart, a venture into Beethoven. Then what? As your tastes mature and you desire something more, there’s Mahler. Each of his symphonies is interesting in its own unique way, and they have been described as ‘full of iconic moments, larger-than-life (and fervently argued) stories, and innovations (formal, conceptual, and in their approach to instrumentation)’. In addition, they are filled with as much emotion and life as with death. Explore Mahler’s 10 with us in celebration of Mahler’s birthday on 7 July.

As with so many composers’ first symphonies, Mahler’s First Symphony was some time in the making. And his concept, with two folk dance movements followed by a funerary movement, was problematic for its first audience. Symphony No. 1 in D major, given the nickname of Titan, started life in some early compositions, but it wasn’t until late 1887 that he worked on the body of the symphony and brought everything together. It was completed in March 1888 and was given its premiere in Budapest, Hungary, in 1889.

After the lacklustre reception of the premiere, Mahler went back and revised it and brought it back to the stage in October 1893 in Hamburg. Before the work was published in 1898, Mahler made further revisions.

For the first 3 performances of the work (Budapest, Hamburg, and Weimar), an additional movement, Blumine, was inserted between movements 1 and 2. This was dropped and wasn’t used after the 1894 Weimar performance, and wasn’t found until 1966. Some performances include this additional movement, but most do not; they may play it separately. It’s important to know about Blumine because Mahler includes references to its main theme in the second movement and in the final movement.

Mahler gave the work the name Titan, taken from a novel of the same name by Jean Paul. He applied it only to the 1893 Hamburg and 1894 Weimar versions of the work; by the time of its publication in 1898, that title had been dropped.

Leonard Berlin: Gustav Mahler, 1892

Mahler started work on his Symphony No. 2 in C minor in 1888 and worked on it after the premiere of Symphony No. 1. He completed work on it in 1894, and it was given its premiere in 1895. The drama is inherent in the work from the first note.

Known as the Resurrection symphony, the work ‘contemplates life and death on a cosmic scale, culminating in an ecstatic hymn of resurrection’. Even Mahler, after the early rehearsals, modestly noted its effect: ‘One is battered to the ground and then raised on angel’s wings to the highest heights’.

The first movement began as the sequel to Symphony No. 1, a symphonic poem titled Todtenfeier (Funeral Rites). If Titan was the musical portrait of a hero, then Todtenfeier was the music for his funeral. However, when he played it for his mentor, Hans von Bülow, von Bülow’s reaction to its overly histrionic qualities (it made Tristan und Isolde sound like a Haydn symphony!) made Mahler reconsider it as a separate work and fold it into his Second Symphony.

Already in his 2nd symphony, Mahler was looking for additional material and so included sung texts, requiring 2 soloists (a soprano and an alto) and a chorus for later movements.

By Symphony No. 3, Mahler was finding his place in the symphonic world. He started work on the sketches in 1893, spent most of 1895 putting most of it together, and completed it in 1896. At six movements, it’s already beyond the normal 4-movement symphony, and he again adds a soprano soloist and choir to the orchestra. At the end, the symphony is the longest written by a major composer, with a giant first movement that, luckily, is followed by shorter movements.

The work was written to a programme that he described in 1896 as ‘A Summer’s Midday Dream’ with movements entitled

I. Pan Awakes, Summer Marches In

II. What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me

III. What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me

IV. What Man Tells Me

V. What the Angels Tell Me

VI. What Love Tells Me

A final movement, VII. What the Child Tells Me was dropped and made its way into his next symphony.

All of these titles were dropped before the work was published in 1896.

Gustav Mahler, 1896

After the solemnity of Symphony No. 3, the next symphony is a delicate dancing delight. He composed the work from 1899 to 1900 and included the child’s view of heaven that was first intended for Symphony No. 3. He returns to standard orchestral forms: a first movement sonata form, a second movement scherzo, and theme and variations for the third movement and then his innovative final movement, for solo voice and orchestra, a symphonic first.

The final movement is a set of strophic variations, with the soprano singing the verses with orchestral refrains. The text describes the joys of heaven, using the text ‘Das himmlische Leben’ (The Heavenly Life) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The bells come from the opening of the first movement, and the whole work seems filled with a curious innocence.

At the end, our child falls asleep, knowing that ‘all things awake to joy’.

Symphony No. 5’s opening trumpet call (which originated in Symphony No. 4) tells us immediately that we’re in a new world. Rhythms reminiscent of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 are everywhere.

This symphony was written in the summers of 1901 and 1902 in his lakeside villa in Carinthia, Austria. His new country villa provided him with a place of rest and relief from his duties in Vienna, and a ‘composing’ hut for working.

Thomas Ledl: Mahler’s piano in his composing hut, Maiernigg, Austria, 2013

Symphonies 5, 6 and 7, all composed during his summers out of Vienna, have certain similarities, the most striking of which is the lack of a vocal voice. What is also striking is Mahler’s study of the works of J.S. Bach, which shows an increasing emphasis on counterpoint, i.e., ‘the relationship of two or more simultaneous musical lines (also called voices) that are harmonically dependent on each other, yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour’.

The fourth movement, the Adagietto, was written in honour of his new wife, Alma Schindler, whom he met in November 1901 and married in March 1902. Their first child, Maria Anna, was born in November 1902.

Alma Mahler and the daughters Maria (at left) and Anna (at right), c. 1906

The fourth movement, given the unusual title Adagietto, is often performed on its own, a signal honour for a symphonic movement. It’s been described as ‘an exquisitely poetic meditation on the deepest sensations of feeling alive in the universe, of having a place in the boundlessness and beauty of divine creation’. It’s also been called a ‘love song without words’, to be delivered to Alma’s ear alone.

Emil Orlík: Gustav Mahler, 1902

Symphony No. 6 was another of his summer projects, written in 1903 and 1904. It bears the nickname Tragic, although the source of the name is unclear.

At work, Mahler was facing increasing difficulties. He was appointed director of the Hofopera (Vienna State Opera) in October 1897, and immediately the criticism started: he’s too young (38 years old), his first opera was Smetana‘s Dalibor, and immediately questions arose from the nationalists asking why he was ‘fraternising with the anti-dynastic, inferior Czech nation’. His conducting style was seen as histrionic and dictatorial (forgetting the fact that he had vastly improved standards).

Hans Schließmann: Caricature of Mahler’s conducting style at the Vienna State Opera, 1901 (Fliegende Blätter)

His Jewish background was also suspect, ignoring the fact that he had converted to Catholicism. The anti-Semitic press wondered if he was truly capable of performing true German works.

Alma Mahler, in her book of Memories and Letters, associated the last movement with tragedy, saying that Mahler himself saw the movement as depicting ‘…the hero on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him, as a tree is felled’.

The final symphony of this period was his Seventh, composed in 1904 and 1905, sometimes titled Lied der Nacht (Song of the Night).

By 1904, Mahler’s reputation as a composer was starting to rival his reputation as a great conductor. He again returned to his composing hut for the summer’s work on this piece, completing the score in August 1905 and the orchestration in 1906. The work was given its premiere in Prague with the Czech Philharmonic on 19 September 1908.

Moritz Nähr: Gustav Mahler, 1907

When he started the work, he was the director of the Vienna State Opera. When the work had its premiere, he had resigned from Vienna and taken up a four-year appointment in New York to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera. He made his Met debut on 1 January 1908 with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. He shared conducting duties with Arturo Toscanini. He also conducted three concerts with the New York Symphony Orchestra, a rival to the New York Philharmonic. This return to orchestral conducting convinced him to take up the position of principal conductor with the New York Philharmonic in 1909. With new support from a group of Guarantors, the Philharmonic’s season was expanded from 8 to 54 concerts and included a tour of New England. Mahler led the Philharmonic until his unexpected death in 1911.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 8  was composed in a single writing burst during the summer of 1906. It was given its premiere by the Munich Philharmonic in September 1910, with the composer conducting.

With this work, he brings the voice back to the orchestra. The performing forces are enormous, and it was quickly dubbed ‘Symphony of a Thousand’; Mahler hated the name. This return to song and symphony, as we saw in his early symphonies, and, like those symphonies, this work breaks all the rules. It’s not in 4 movements but in 2 parts, covering 24 movements. The first part is based on the Latin hymn Veni creator spiritus (“Come, Creator Spirit”), a ninth-century hymn for Pentecost, and Part II takes the distinctly secular theme from Goethe‘s Faust, setting the words from the play’s closing scene. The parts are joined by the shared idea of love’s power and its role in redemption.

The work was Mahler’s expression of confidence in the human spirit, and one critic views it as equivalent to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 as the ‘defining human statement for its century’.

The opening of the first part is a glorious declaration from the chorus.

Dupont: Gustav Mahler, 1909

The opening of Part II takes us to a much darker world.

This was the last of Mahler’s works to be given its premiere in his lifetime. Two more works were to follow.

Symphony No. 9 was written between 1908 and 1909. While he has returned to 4-movement form, he breaks the rules by making the first and last movements slow (Andante and Adagio) rather than the normal Allegro.

In the second movement, Mahler returns to the Austrian countryside with a movement based on the ländler. However, as the movement continues, our happy and optimistic folk dance changes and distorts. A big-city waltz interrupts, and at the end, we return to our countryside dance, but not with the same opening innocence.

Mahler began writing his 10th symphony in 1910 and, at his death in 1911, left the work unfinished. The work was substantially complete but had not been elaborated or orchestrated. It wasn’t performable as it was left, and early attempts to create performing editions were unsatisfactory.

British musicologist and Mahler expert Deryck Cooke started working on his edition in 1959 and completed it in 1976. Alma Mahler at first forbade him to work on the material, but was eventually persuaded to change her mind after seeing his score and hearing a recording.

The work received its premiere at the BBC Proms on 13 August 1964, after which the family gave Cooke access to more of Mahler’s sketches, and he revised his version twice more, completing a final version in 1976.

Mahler had been diagnosed with heart problems in 1907, shortly after his first daughter died of scarlet fever and diphtheria. Mahler was supposed to avoid over-fatigue, but how much he could do this as an active conductor remains a question. He held his last concert in New York at Carnegie Hall on 21 February 1911, whereupon he was confined to a hospital with bacterial endocarditis, common in people with cardiac problems. He returned to Europe by boat and arrived in Paris 10 days later. He entered a French clinic in Neuilly, France. On 11 May, he was at the Löw sanatorium in Vienna, where he developed pneumonia and died on 18 May 1911, at the age of 50.

We celebrate his birth on 7 July 1860 and recognise that Mahler changed our concept of symphonic music forever by expanding its horizons from simply orchestral to one that encompasses the world.

YUJA and MAHLER, a spectacular duo awaiting their next tour

"That’s a wrap on another fantastic tour with Yuja Wang who play-conducted Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2, Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1, and Tsfasman’s Jazz Suite.Yuja will be joining us again in September with maestro Teddy Abrams for Barber Piano Concerto, Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3, Tsfasman’s Jazz Suite and more! We are already ready  see our website for more information!"

"Si conclude così un altro fantastico tour con Yuja Wang, che ha diretto il Concerto per pianoforte n. 2 di Prokofiev, il Concerto per pianoforte n. 1 di Chopin e la Jazz Suite di Tsfasman. Yuja si unirà di nuovo a noi a settembre con il maestro Teddy Abrams per il Concerto per pianoforte di Barber, il Concerto per pianoforte n. 3 di Prokofiev, la Jazz Suite di Tsfasman e molto altro! Siamo già pronti  visita il nostro sito web per maggiori informazioni!"

MCO

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From Musical Royalty to Tragic Heroine Violinist and Conductor Alma Rosé

by Janet Horvath  

Alma Rosé

Alma Rosé, a top-class artist – violinist, conductor, ensemble leader and actress, is most remembered today for her amazing courage. She was the conductor and founder of the celebrated women’s orchestra Wiener Walzermädeln–but she is primarily remembered as the conductor of the infamous women’s orchestra in the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. While she kept her musicians alive, she tragically perished.

Gustav Mahler

Justine and Gustav Mahler

Alma came from musical royalty: Alma’s mother, Justine Mahler, was the younger sister of legendary composer Gustav Mahler. As Mahler’s niece, she had contact with and was surrounded by the musical stars of early 20th-century Germany and Vienna. Her father, violinist Arnold Rosenblum, also a great influence, was the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic.

Gustav Mahler and Arnold Josef Rosé

To be accepted in Vienna into the upper echelons of society, it was not advantageous to be Jewish. Rosé Austrianized his name from Rosenblum to Rosé in 1882. Mahler also felt he had to convert, and he did so in 1897 to Catholicism.

The young Alma Rosé

Rosé, a superb violinist, founded and performed with the internationally renowned Rosé String Quartet. The Rosé quartet gave premieres of both Brahms and Schoenberg. That’s an indication of the group’s longevity, and we are fortunate to have a recording from 1910, albeit a bit scratchy!     

Alma and Arnold Rosé, Date unknown © Gustav Mahler–Alfred Rosé Collection, Music Library, Western University, London, Canada

Arnold was Alma’s first teacher, and soon Alma was proficient enough to make her Viennese debut in 1926, at the Musikverein, playing Bach‘s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043 as a soloist performing with her father. We can hear them together playing the Largo movement on this rare recording from 1928. There are no other known sound recordings of Alma.   

In 1930, at the age of 24, Alma married the brilliant young Czech violinist Váša Příhoda and took Czechoslovakia citizenship. Alma hoped to stand out from the shadow of the two great violinists in her life, her father and her husband. She established something different, founding a touring women’s orchestra in 1932. The nine to fifteen-member Wiener Walzermädeln (Viennese Waltzing Girls) donned elegant and feminine matching gowns, sometimes wearing charming caps, and played the most popular music of the time, the Viennese waltz. Austria had become synonymous with the waltz, a popular genre in the 1800s and homeland of the Waltz King, Johann Strauss II. The Walzermädeln toured with enormous success all throughout Europe in the early 30s.

The Viennese Waltz Girls (Bottom: Alma Rosé standing) 1933
© Gustav Mahler–Alfred Rosé Collection, Music Library, Western University, London, Canada

Alma Rosé as a young girl around 1914 © Gustav Mahler–Alfred Rosé Collection, Music Library, Western University, London, Canada

The music they would’ve played includes Johann Strauss’s charming waltzes, marches, and polkas such as Artists Waltz Op.316, his Persian March Op. 289 and his Champagne Polka Op. 211.

The group continued to perform all over Europe, from Warsaw to Rome, until the political climate in Austria became increasingly alarming, when Hitler came to power in Germany. The last concert of the Viennese Waltzing Girls was at Vienna’s Ronacher Theater on New Year’s Eve 1937, bringing their performances to an end. Only a few weeks later, the Nazi “Anschluss” (annexation) of Austria took place in March 1938. The Rosé family members were immediately barred from performing. Alma’s father, after 57 years, was removed from positions at both the Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic, ignominiously ousted.

As Jews, the Rosé family understood the serious risks to their family. During the troubling years of the 1930s, they’d felt helpless, as Alma’s mother, Justine, Mahler’s sister, was gravely ill. When she died in the late summer of 1938, they began to formulate a plan to escape.

Alma’s brother Alfred and his wife Maria Rosé-Schmutzer fled shortly afterwards, a complicated getaway via the Netherlands, then by ship to New York, finally arriving in London, Ontario, Canada.

Alma stayed behind to care for her father. Here is an extraordinary documentary to listen to.  

By April 26, 1938, the Regulation on the Registration of the Assets of Jews was put into place. All Jewish people, as well as non-Jewish partners in so-called Mischehen (mixed marriages), were forced to declare their assets if they exceeded RM 5,000. The Rosé family, prominent members of society, were targeted by the Nazis. What would become of their violins? Arnold owned a rare 1718 Stradivarius and Alma, an exquisite Guadagnini from 1757.

Alma and Arnold Rosé with their violins, Atelier Willinger, undated © KHM-Museumsverband, Theatermuseum

Alma couldn’t risk the confiscation of the violins by the Nazis, but to conceal such valuable assets was a huge risk, especially for well-known personalities. It would require courageous action, clear-headed thinking, and a foolproof scheme to save them.

Undaunted, Alma’s declaration listed both violins, but their pedigree was cleverly hidden. She filled out the required document, “two Italian violins for personal use”, without the names of the makers of the instruments, which would have immediately revealed their value.

The ploy worked. It helped enormously that Alma’s Czech married name and her Czechoslovakian citizenship disguised who she truly was, a critical factor that contributed to a successful flight from the Nazis.

Alma fled to London in early 1939. Arnold followed her a few weeks later at the last possible moment before the borders were tightly closed. After such an incomparable and illustrious career, Arnold was forced to leave Austria penniless.

Once they’d escaped, they were plagued by financial problems that became overwhelming. The refugees flocking to London, mainly European musicians, were barred from performing and teaching. Alma succeeded in taking both instruments with her, but as hunger became a constant, the Rosés adamantly refused to sell their violins.

In desperation, Alma signed a contract for a two-month engagement at the Grand Hotel Central in The Hague – a venue where she and the Wiener Walzermädeln had performed with great success. Alma played several house concerts and extended her stay as additional engagements opened up for her in the Netherlands.

For a few months, she was able to resume her successful concert life. But the Germans occupied the Netherlands in May of 1940. The enemies were once again at her heels. Alma and Příhoda had divorced in 1935, and she’d married Constant August van Leeuwen Boomkamp, a medical student, to continue to evade detection.

It didn’t help Alma. This time, she was trapped. Alma was arrested at a train station in France and sent to Drancy for several months. Established in August 1941, the Drancy camp in France became a major transit camp for the deportations of Jews from France. Almost 65,000 Jews were deported from Drancy to terrifying destinations, including Auschwitz. Fewer than 2,000 of them survived.

On July 18, 1943, Alma was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Almost immediately, she was sent to the dreaded and horrifying medical experimentation block—Block 10. She’d been registered under her husband’s name, so once again, Nazi officials did not realise who she was.

Fortuitously, a request was made for a violinist for a VIP’s birthday celebration in the camp. The Nazis, after all, loved their music. She played for them, and her virtuosity quite impressed the officials.

They transferred Alma to Birkenau and, in August 1943, selected her to be the conductor of the women’s orchestra.

Alma seemed to have no fear of the SS guards who respected her musicianship. Taking advantage of her position, Alma requested and somehow managed some privileges.

Her orchestra received a special barracks, which contained an unheard-of living and practicing area, with a small heater. The dwelling even had a wooden floor! Alma convinced the authorities that the instruments had to be protected against the cold and dampness. Downright luxurious compared to the bare barracks of others.

Alma began to work tirelessly on the ensemble’s quality. The group was made up of mostly amateurs who played a wide array of instruments, including violin, accordion, flute, guitars, and mandolins. Alma endeavoured to keep the players with less talent on as assistants rather than dismissing them, which was a life-saving gesture in the context of Auschwitz.

Rosé was a strict and thorough taskmistress, pushing her musicians to the limits of their endurance. It was paramount to do everything she could to make them sound professional, because the Nazis knew their music. Alma couldn’t risk mediocrity. The women rehearsed daily for eight hours a day, thereby evading the slave labour workforce.

The SS required the orchestra to play daily at the camp gates as prisoners departed for and arrived from slave labour morning and evening, and when captives were marched to the crematoriums.

The Auschwitz orchestra also performed regular Sunday concerts for selected prisoners and the camp staff; they made regular visits to the infirmary, played during elite visits to the camp, and had to be available for individual SS demands like birthday parties.

Although Alma drove herself and the musicians, she was respected by her orchestra, valued for both her violin playing and her conducting.  Above all, she understood that if they were to survive, they had to please the SS. Surely, if they played well enough, they would be allowed to live.

Drawing of Alma Rosé in Auschwitz

Rosé arranged pieces for her orchestra from whatever sheet music she had available and from melodies she recalled from memory: music by Mozart, Schubert, Vivaldi, Johann Strauss, and Franz Liszt, and from German hits, movie and operetta tunes.

Playing music gave them all moments of respite, allowing them to float somewhere above or beyond the camp atmosphere.

Alma Rosé’s final concert was at a private SS party on April 2, 1944.

Suddenly and inexplicably ill, she was taken to the infirmary with head and stomach pains and a high fever. On 4 April 1944, she was declared dead. There are still questions about her death. Could it have been suicide or poisoning by jealous functionaries? Many insist that she fell victim to accidental food poisoning or a sudden infection.

Unbelievably enough, the SS approved an observance in her memory —to recognise her unique status, perhaps the only time in the history of the camps that SS officers honoured a dead Jewish prisoner.

For the musicians, however, their grief was mixed with fear. Former member Silvia Wagenberg remembered:

When she died, I thought, now it’s over; either they will send us somewhere else — then we’re done for, or we’ll be gassed right away.  It is hardly measurable what Alma meant for the orchestra.”

All but two of the orchestra members survived the war. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a cellist, was one of them, saved by playing in the Auschwitz women’s orchestra.

When the war was finally over, Lasker-Wallfisch settled in Britain, where she met and married her husband, Peter Wallfisch. She was the founding member of the British Chamber Orchestra, touring internationally with the group. Anita refused to go to Germany for many decades until in 1994, she realised she must relate her experiences during the war.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, now 100 years old. She has eloquently related her experiences in numerous documentaries about her life. Two poignant things she’s said jump out for me: “As Long as We Can Breathe, We Can Hope,” and “Music takes you out into a different sphere. You get away from your horrible realities…You could lose yourself in music, untouchable.”

Please listen to two short examples of Lasker-Wallfisch’s testimonies.   

The piece that is featured in this clip by the BBC, Robert Schumann’s Träumerei is ironically enough, from his “Scenes from Childhood”, this movement is entitled “Dreaming.”

It is deeply troubling that Alma perished alongside so many millions. It’s impossible to imagine that under these horrific circumstances, musical ensembles were established in several concentration camps, including an orchestra that my father joined after being liberated. Somehow, the musicians continued to perform, and music saved their lives.

Even after the war, music enabled survivors to build a new life. My father was one of them. A cellist too, after months as a slave labourer in the copper mines of Bor, Yugoslavia, my father played 200 concerts from 1946-1948 in a 17-member orchestra in the displaced persons camps throughout Bavaria. Their mandate—to bring morale-boosting programs to those still languishing in DP camps waiting for news of loved ones or the right paperwork to leave Europe. In 1948, two of the concerts my father played in Landsberg, Germany, were with Leonard Bernstein performing and conducting, before he was as famous as he was to become.

If you’d like to read more about these times, I tell our family story in my book The Cello Still Sings – A Generational Story of the Holocaust and of the Transformative Power of Music.

There’s a wonderful book about Alma Rosé by Richard Newman, Alma Rosé: Vienna to Auschwitz, and watch for a new documentary now in production, Alma Rosé, directed and produced by Francine Zuckerman of z films. (More details from @almarosefilm)