G. Mahler. Symphony No. 6 in A minor ("Tragic")
Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra
Conductor Gintaras Rinkevičius
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) wrote his Sixth Symphony in 1903-1904, while he was at the height of his conducting career and leading the Vienna Opera. While Europe was in the midst of significant political and social upheavals and tensions, which later led to the First World War, Mahler's personal life was riddled with anxiety, strained relationships and health problems. In parallel, however, the composer experienced a very active creative period. At the time, Vienna, where Mahler lived and worked, was a thriving cultural centre with artistic movements and intellectual debates. For his Sixth Symphony, Mahler drew inspiration from philosophical and literary sources - Friedrich Nietzsche, especially his concept of 'eternal recurrence' and the idea of facing life's challenges with courage and perseverance, and the Austrian poet Heinrich Leopold Wagner, whose use of themes such as fate and human suffering resonated with Mahler deeply. The title of his Sixth Symphony, Tragic, reflects Mahler's interest in the tragic world-view prevalent in literature and drama of the time.
At the time, there was a shift towards modernism in the musical landscape, with composers experimenting with new harmonic languages and forms. However, Mahler's avant-garde compositions were controversial. The Sixth Symphony is a thread of Mahler's weaving of a recurring musical motif, the so-called 'Alma theme'. This delightful melody, which is heard at the beginning of the work, undergoes various transformations in the symphony, reflecting the multifaceted nature of Mahler's feelings for his wife and the tumultuous nature of their relationship: their marriage was plagued by jealousy, infidelity and rivalry, and was marked by great emotional ups and downs, by passionate affection and intense conflicts. The entire Sixth Symphony is like a profound meditation on the human experience, varying from utter ecstasy to utter despair. In the dramatic finale, Mahler's hammer strikes the "blows of fate" which became a prophetic sign of the tragedies of the composer's life.
