Donald Macleod traces the course of Mahler's career as he takes up the most prestigious post in music, Director of the Vienna Court Opera.

Gustav Mahler rose from humble beginnings on the fringes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to become one of the most powerful figures in the musical establishment. Nowadays his symphonies are almost guaranteed to fill concert halls, but during his lifetime Mahler made his name as a conductor.

Mahler had landed the most important job of his life, but his conducting duties in Vienna often prevented him from composing. Yet during the summer, in his woodland composing hut on the banks of Lake Attersee in Upper Austria, he would write some of his most enduring symphonies.

Symphony No 4 in G major (2nd mvt)
Cleveland Orchestra conducted by George Szell

In diesem Wetter (Kindertotenlieder)
Hermann Prey, baritone
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink

Symphony No 5 in C sharp minor (1st mvt)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein

5 Rückert-Lieder
Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano
NDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner

Producer: Callum Thomson. Show less