Recorded live at Kulturzentrum Toblach in September 2024, Mahler: Symphony No. 5 on Period Instruments presents Mahler’s Fifth Symphony performed on painstakingly reconstructed period instruments. The same models used by the Vienna Philharmonic during Mahler’s own tenure as its director. Gut strings, wooden mutes, near-vibrato-free winds, and audible portamento recreate a sound world lost for over a century, informed by musicologist Clive Brown’s research and the new critical urtext edition from Breitkopf & Härtel.

The performance brings together 45 young musicians of the Gustav Mahler Academy with 55 players from Europe’s leading orchestras, under Philipp von Steinaecker — continuing the Academy’s acclaimed “originalklang project” following their praised recording of the Ninth Symphony. The extensive booklet essay by Steinaecker traces the symphony’s remarkable biography: composed in the shadow of Mahler’s near-fatal illness, built around a death-haunted funeral march and a “merry dance of death” scherzo, and culminating in the Adagietto — reportedly a wordless marriage proposal to Alma Schindler — before resolving into one of Mahler’s most triumphant finales.

Mahler Academy Orchestra
Philipp von Steinaecker, Conductor