Recorded live at Kulturzentrum Toblach in September 2024, this release 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