MAHLER

KEN RUSSELL

Russell had long been an admirer of Mahler’s music. He said he based the film on “the rondo form in music where you present the theme and follow it with variations, then return to the theme and so on. My theme was the composer‘s last train journey before he died. During the journey we flash back to incidents in his life, the variations on the theme as it were. They vary from passion to comedy. Like the scherzos from his symphonies some of the scenes are pretty grotesque, too.”
cinema full

Animation
Mahler – Das Lied von der Erde – Der Abschied – O Adeus

Das Lied von der Erde is a large-scale work composed in 1908-1909 by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. The work was described as a symphony when published, and it comprises six separate songs for two singers who take turns to sing the songs. Mahler specified the two singers should be a Tenor and an Alto, or else a Tenor and a Baritone. The work was composed following the most painful period in Mahler’s life, and the songs address themes such as those of living, parting and salvation. On the centenary of Mahler’s birth, the composer, conductor and Mahler champion Leonard Bernstein described Das Lied von der Erde as Mahler’s “Greatest symphony”.