Symphony No.4 in G Dur

Mahler wrote his FOURTH SYMPHONY on the turn of the century, in 1899-1901. At that time, the composer was invited to take up the post of third conductor at the Imperial Opera in Vienna, but the magnitude of his personality met with quick appreciation and he was appointed Director. In what became customary occurrence, he managed to devote time for his creative work only in the leisure summer months of the vacation, which he usually spent in Mayernigg, the present-day resort township of Maria Wörth in the Carinthian province. This premiere performance of the symphony took place on November 25, 1901 in Munich, with the Kaim Orchestra (present day Munich Philharmonic Orchestra), conducted by the author, with Margarete Michalek as soloist. Mahler incorporated his song Das himmlische Leben ("Heavenly Life") as a finale to the symphony in which life in paradise is presented through the guileless eyes of a child. Mahker wrote the song in 1892 in Hamburg, while at work on his Second Symphony. On the title sheet of the score, he noted "A poem from The Boy's Miraculous Horn. A humoresque sketch for voice and orchestra". In fact, the original title in the collection was The Heaven Is Full of Fiddles ("Der Himmel hängt voller Geigen"). Mahler originally intended to introduce the song in the closing movement of his Third Symphony, but eventually changed his mind and decided to turn it into a finale for the Fourth instead. It was the nature of this song that defined the entire symphony – the contents of its imagery, the specific irrealism, the intimate sound, and the reduced dimensions as compared to the rest of Mahler's symphonies. "I actually just wanted to write a symphonic humoresque, and then it became the normal measure of a symphony" – the composer said later in one of his letters.