Gustav Mahler: Symphonie Nr. 1 (Mariss Jansons) (CD, Br-Klassik)

Actually everything that will characterize it is already there in the First Symphony; Here his life melody can already be heard, which he brings to the highest development: the devotion to nature and thoughts of death, this is how fellow composer Schönberg judged the symphonic composer Gustav Mahler (1860 1911). Mahler found this melody of life even before his symphonic debut, namely in the songs of a traveling journeyman, some of which he reused in his First Symphony, a work that initially did not achieve the desired success when it was first performed in Budapest in 1889. In subsequent performances, Mahler therefore added programmatic explanations and the title Titan. The symphony finally began its triumphal march into the concert halls of the world as a four-movement work without a title, program and without a flower chapter. The symphonies of the Austrian composer on the threshold of musical modernity have been part of the ensemble’s repertoire since Rafael Kubelík established the Mahler tradition with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in the early 1960s. BR-KLASSIK’s 2007 recording of Mahler’s First Symphony with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of his former chief conductor Mariss Jansons, who died in 2019, is an album premiere in that this recording has so far only been a bonus CD was published within the audio biography about Gustav Mahler’s world and dream (BR-KLASSIK 900901). The new release (BR-KLASSIK CD 900179) is aimed primarily at all those who experience Mahler’s First Symphony under the direction of Mariss Jansons and who would like to purchase the orchestral work separately without an audio biography.