An informative and entertaining audio-visual concert at Concert Hall of Culture and Convention Centre Lucerne (2004) with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado and hosted by Jeremy Barham who analyzes the composer Gustav Mahler's most famous works. Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor Part I 5:01 I. Trauermarsch: In gemessenem 9:44 II. Stürmisch bewegt Part II 14:43 III. Scherzo: Kräftig, nicht zu schnell Part III 19:06 IV. Adagietto: Sehr langsam Complex, enigmatic and revelatory, huge in breadth and scope, Mahlar's Fifth Symphony transcends the ordinary world of everyday life, and it has both bewitched and baffled audiences for more than a hundred years. Perhaps no-one has expressed this confusion better than the composer himself, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek letter to his wife Alma, written shortly before the premiere in 1904: 'the public - oh Heavens - what kind of face will it make at this chaos, that continually gives birth to a new world only to see it collapse again the next moment, at these primeval sounds, at this roaring, bellowing, raging sea, at these dancing stars, at these breathless, shimmering, flashing waves?' Anticipating a poor reception, he lamented, 'Oh, if only I could premiere my symphonies fifty years after my death!' Gustav Mahler was born in Kalište, Bohemia on 7 July 1860. His early musical education came from an eclectic variety of sources, and by the age of ten he had gained a measure of local renown as a 28 talentad pianist. In 1875 he was accepted into the Vienna Conservatory, where ha spent three years studying piano and composition. It was in this cosmopolitan city that he met and befriended several of the most important musical figures of the era, including the composers Hugo Wolf and Anton Bruckner. It was here, too, that bis musical tendencies were shaped, and in 1877 he joined the Academic Wagner Society. Over the next twenty years he forged a reputation as a gifted conductor, gradually raising his profile as he moved from post to post in Kassel, Pragua, Leipzig, Budapest and Hamburg; but in 1897 he returned to Vienna, accepting the directorship ofthe prestigicus Vienna Hofoper. The next decade brought some extraordinary professional successes, but also some tragedies. In 1898 his close friend Hugo Wolf was committed to an asylum, where he died only a few years later. Mahler started work on the Fifth Symphony in 1901, also the year that he met Alma Schindler, and in March of the following year they were married. He finished the symphony that summer and conducted it himself at its premiere in Cologne on 18 October 1904. It was his first symphony to be unsupported by a text or explicit programme. Like many of Mahler's works, it exhibits progressive tonality - in other words, it ends in a different key from the one in which it began, moving from C sharp minor to D major. It encountared a mixed response, and of its five movements the fourth is perhaps the best known. In 1907 Gustav and Alma Mahler left Vienna for New York. His performances at the Metropolitan Opera were well received, and he returned for a second season in 1908. He subsequantly visited the city as principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra a further two times, but in February 1911 he fell ill. After a lengthy journey back to Vienna, he died on 18 May. The composer Arnold Schoanberg and the artist Gustav Klimtware among the mourners at his funeral, which took place on 22 May. Watch more episodes of the series "Discovering Masterpieces of Classical Music": goo.gl/KBV6cR Subscribe to EuroArts: goo.gl/jrui3M

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