Mahler: Symphony No. 7 in E Minor ‘Song of the Night’: IV. Nachtmusik. Andante amoroso

Music: Symphony No. 7 in E Minor "Lied der Nacht" (Song of the Night): IV. Nachtmusik. Andante amoroso
Composer: Gustav Mahler
Artists: Valery Gergiev (conductor); London Symphony Orchestra (orchestra)
Album: Mahler: Symphony No. 7 ‘Song of the Night’
Label: Alto/Musical Concepts (ALC1404)
UPC: 5055354414091

Gustav Mahler wrote his Seventh Symphony during the summers of 1904 and 1905, at his composing hut near the Worthersee, a lake in Southern Austria. He devoted most of the 1904 summer to his Sixth Symphony, but the Seventh was begun before the Sixth was finished. The second and fourth of the Seventh Symphony’s five movements, both entitled ‘Nachtmusik’ (night music) date from this summer. The completed work would later be nicknamed ‘Song of the Night’, although not by Mahler himself. The name references the ‘Nachtmusik’ movements, and also the third movement that separates them, a nightmarish Scherzo, marked Schattenhaft (shadow-like). Those nocturnal references link the symphony back to the ‘Tragic’ Sixth (again, not Mahler’s title), but the mood is different. Where the Sixth Symphony is increasingly resigned to fate, the Seventh explores a range of nocturnal moods, but ultimately ends with a bright and positive finale, an antidote to the despair of the Sixth.

But there is much darkness in the Seventh Symphony too, and Mahler struggled to find the balance. With the ‘Nachtmusik’ movements completed, Mahler returned to his conducting responsibilities at the Court Opera in Vienna. When he tried to resume the symphony the following summer, he drew a blank. But inspiration came suddenly. Mahler later recalled, in a 1910 letter to his wife, Alma, how the work was completed: ‘Two weeks long I tortured myself to distraction, as you’ll well remember—until I ran away to the Dolomites! There the same struggle, until finally I gave up and went home convinced that the summer had been wasted. At Krumpendorf ... I climbed into the boat to be rowed across the lake [the Worthersee]. At the first stroke of the oars I found the theme (or rather the rhythm and the character) of the introduction to the first movement ... and in four weeks’ time the first, third and fifth movements were absolutely complete!’

This, the fourth movement, the second ‘Nachtmusik’, suggests a pastoral scene. Mahler adds guitar and mandolin to the ensemble, who serenade with the harps, the mood romantic and Mediterranean. After Mahler’s death, Alma wrote in her memoires, ‘When [Mahler] wrote the serenade, he was beset by Eichendorff-ish visions—murmuring springs and German Romanticism.’ But the nocturnal mood remains sinister, and menacing military figures continually lurk in the shadows.

Recorded at the Barbican, March 2008.
Originally issued as LSO 0665
Producer: James Mallinson
Engineers: Neil Hutchinson & Jonathan Stokes for Classic Sound Ltd Mastered for Alto by Paul Arden-Taylor