Gustav Mahler spent 1909 and 1910 working on his final two symphonies. The Ninth has gone down in history as the culmination of his symphonic output and a prophetic anticipation of musical modernism. But owing to his declining health, he had to stop work on the Tenth after a few months and was unable to resume it before his death. Only the first movement,

included here, was orchestrated to a point where it can be performed without non-authorial additions. – The Mahler cycle by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi is appearing complete on DVD and Blu-ray on the C Major label and has already been internationally acclaimed as one of the most important Mahler projects of the new millennium.

“If I knew Mahler only from his music, I would say that he has a huge heart and a deep connection with the soul and humanity.” – PAAVO JÄRVI

Symphonies Nos. 5 + 6 will continue the release of the complete Mahler cycle with Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, which since the 80s became a “powerful Mahler orchestra” (Frankfurter Rundschau)

Bonus: Introductions to Symphonies Nos. 5 + 6 with Paavo Järvi

In many ways Mahler’s Seventh and Eighth Symphonies are the most unusual works that the late Romantic composer ever wrote. The Seventh was the last in a series of middle-period pieces that were purely instrumental in character. Two movements headed “Nachtmusik“ (night music) and the remarkable writing for a guitar and a mandolin help to create a sequence

of darkly Romantic visions. And even within Mahler’s markedly eclectic output, the Eighth Symphony enjoys the status of an exotic outsider thanks not only to ist two-movement form combining an early medieval hymn and the final scene from Goethe’s Faust but also to the vast forces for which it is scored, earning it the title of “Symphony of a Thousand”.

“If I knew Mahler only from his music, I would say that he has a huge heart and a deep connection with the soul and humanity.” – PAAVO JÄRVI