VietNamNet Bridge – The Symphony No.7 by famous Austrian composer Gustav Mahler will be played by the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra (VNSO) under the baton of Japanese conductor Honna Tesuji on October 12-13.

Song of the Earth to be staged in Hanoi

The five-movement symphony was composed by Mahler in 1904-1905 and still evokes many controversial ideas worldwide about its meanings and messages.

The first movement is in sonata form. It begins with a slow introduction, launched by a dark melody played by a baritone horn (GermanTenorhorn).

The accompanimental rhythm was said to have come to Mahler whilst rowing on the lake at Maiernigg after a period of compositional drought.

The second opens with horns calling to each other across the mountain valleys in the gathering dusk. The first of the two "Nachtmusik" ("Night Music") movements, this is said to represent a "walk by night", and could represent a musical recreation of Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which impressed Mahler. He had spent considerable time at the Rijksmuseum on his first trip to the Netherlands in 1904.

There is an undercurrent of night about the spooky third movement, which is really "a most morbid and sarcastic mockery of the Viennese waltz".

The fourth movement (the second "Nachtmusik"), with its "amorous" marking and reduced instrumentation—trombones, tuba and trumpets are silent and woodwinds reduced by half—has been described as "a long stretch of chamber music set amidst this huge orchestral work".

A solo violin introduces the movement, while a horn solo above the gentle tones of a guitar and mandolin create a magical serenade character.

Boisterous timpani, joined in the fray by blazing brass, set the scene for the riotous fifth movement. Here is quasi-film music, pomp and pageantry and great dramatic gestures all rolled into a piece that demands intense orchestral display.

Formally, the movement is a rondo that acts as the theme for a set of eight variations, capped off by a dramatic coda.

Of all the Symphony's movements, this has come in for the greatest amount of criticism and puzzlement (it has been seen by many as something of a let-down and somewhat superficial, dodging questions set by the previous movements): its virtually unrelenting mood of celebration seems quite at odds with the dark character of the earlier movements – "a vigorous life-asserting pageant of Mahlerian blatancy".

The symphony was made debut by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra with artists from Germany and conducted by the composer.

Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation.

VietNamNet/VOV