In summer 1903, Mahler was at his happiest time of life. Married to the beautiful Alma and father to two healthy daughters, it doesn’t seem like the time when one would compose a symphony often called the Tragic. However, in an eerily prescient stroke, this is exactly what Mahler does. In the years that followed, Mahler suffered the death of a child, the loss of his position in Vienna, and learned of his debilitating heart disease—three blows of fate predicted by the blows of the drum that fell the Hero at the close of Symphony No. 6.
Podcasts from the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.
