07/07/2020 Music

Revelge from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”. Gustav Mahler

On an equally green and sunny summer day 160 years ago, Gustav Mahler was born. Despite his family having no musical background, Mahler’s world was full of sounds and voices since early childhood, while his first impressions involved folk songs.

Songs retained their place as one of the key genres in the great Austrian’s creative life. His guidebook was “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”, a collection of old German folk songs.

Today, we are going to publish excerpts from the cycle with the same name on musicAeterna.org. Each fragment has been picked by Teodor Currentzis for this special occasion.

The first one, Revelge, was first performed by Mahler on one of his birthdays, right before the creation of Symphony No.4. This is perhaps the only symphony by Mahler to have been born from a song; we shall certainly return to it at the end of this day.

The recording was made at musicAeterna’s performance at Konzerthaus Wien.

Anna-Lucia Richter (soprano)
Florian Boesch (bass-baritone)
musicAeterna orchestra
Conducted by Teodor Currentzis

Thanks to takt1 for the video provided.