78rpm Gustav Mahler Symphony No 4, Bruno Walter, New York. Rare Shellac Pressing
$
30
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Description
Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 4 In G Major
Bruno Walter, Conducting
The New York Philharmonic Orchestra
Desi Halban, Soprano
Label: Columbia Masterworks ?– M-MM 589
Format: 6 × Shellac, 12", 78 RPM, Album
Country: US
Released: 1948
Genre: Classical
Style: Neo-Romantic, Modern
Credits
Composed By – Gustav Mahler
Conductor, Liner Notes – Bruno Walter
Cover – Steinweiss
Liner Notes – Alma Mahler-Werfel, Franz Werfel
Lyrics From – Des Knaben Wunderhorn (tracks: B2)
Soprano Vocals – Desi Halban (tracks: B2)
Condition.
The 6 Shellac discs are in Very Good to Very Good+ condition. The discs are clean. Some light surface wear on a few sides. No large scratches. No gauges or chips. Clean labels. The accordion box is in good condition due to vintage tape repairs, making the box solid and secure. General surface wear and rounded corners to the boards from age, use and storage. Please review pictures for greater details. Record grading based on visual inspection and vinyl grading standards.
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This 1948 set represents the first commercially available recording of Mahler's Fourth Symphony. It is not the priemiere recording however. The Fourth was recorded eighteen years earlier in 1930 by conductor Hidemaro Konoye and The New Symphony Orchestra Of Tokio, with soprano Eiko Kitazawa. Only one copy of that recording is known to exist, resting in a Dutch radio library. Bruno Walter's 1948 release by Columbia Masterworks brought Mahler to a wide, far-reaching audience.
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Symphony No. 4 in G major by Gustav Mahler was written in 1899 and 1900, though it incorporates a song originally written in 1892. The song, "Das himmlische Leben", presents a child's vision of Heaven. It is sung by a soprano in the work's fourth and final movement. Although typically described as being in the key of G major, the symphony employs a progressive tonal scheme ('(b)/G—E').
Mahler's first four symphonies are often referred to as the Wunderhorn symphonies because many of their themes originate in earlier songs by Mahler on texts from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn). The fourth symphony is built around a single song, "Das himmlische Leben" ("The Heavenly Life"). It is prefigured in various ways in the first three movements and sung in its entirety by a solo soprano in the fourth movement. Mahler composed "Das himmlische Leben" as a freestanding piece in 1892. The title is Mahler's own: in the Wunderhorn collection the poem is called "Der Himmel hängt voll Geigen" (an idiomatic expression akin to "there's not a cloud in the sky"). Several years later Mahler considered using the song as the seventh and final movement of his Symphony No. 3. While motifs from "Das himmlische Leben" are found in the Symphony No. 3, Mahler eventually decided not to include it in that work and, instead, made the song the goal and source of his Symphony No. 4. This symphony thus presents a thematic fulfilment of the musical world of No. 3, which is part of the larger tetralogy of the first four symphonies, as Mahler described them to Natalie Bauer-Lechner. Early plans in which the Symphony was projected as a six-movement work included another Wunderhorn song, "Das irdische Leben" ("The Earthly Life") as a somber pendant to "Das himmlische Leben", offering a tableau of childhood starvation in juxtaposition to heavenly abundance, but Mahler later decided on a simpler structure for the score.
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