The third of Mahler’s songs to be played on musicAeterna.org today was written in February 1892. Not even 32 at that point, Mahler had recently become head of Hamburg Opera and had definitely gained recognition as a conductor. Mahler the composer, on the other hand, had lived through the failed premiere of Symphony No.1 and was completely immersed in his creative laboratory: over three months in 1892, he would create five songs for the upcoming “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” cycle. One of those was “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?”. It was similar in its apparent simplicity to the song that came next: “Das himmlische Leben”, which you can surely recognize as the final of Symphony No.4.
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.