MAHLER'S SYMPHONY No. 5

During the sweltering summer months of 1901 - 02 Gustav Mahler wrote one of his most famous pieces, the magnificent Symphony No. 5. Conductor Herbert van Carajan said that when one hears Mahler's Fifth, “you forget that time has passed. A great performance of the Fifth is a transforming experience. The fantastic finale almost forces you to hold your breath.” In its entirety, a performance can last over 70 minutes and certainly the most famous movement is the oft-performed Adagietto. The soaring movement, so beloved in recent years, is better understood when considering the mood of Mahler himself during the creation. He had reached the peak of his professional career, purchased a grand villa, and was presiding over the Vienna Court Opera, one of the most prestigious positions in the musical world-- it seemed he lacked nothing until he met the alluring and vibrant young debutante, Alma Schindler. She was 22 years to his 41, gregarious vivacity to his introverted genius.

In Adagietto, Mahler had composed a musical declaration of love. He sent it to Alma as a wordless proposal. She understood. It needed no text to make its meaning clear. The beginning melody is swollen with endless longing, the middle a story of their courtship, and concludes with a profound feeling of contentment. By the following summer they were married. A composer herself, Mahler's work often communicated the state of their sometimes tumultuous marriage; it seems the music spoke to her as clearly than words. She was his muse.

I first heard Mahler's Adagietto as a young girl. My mother watched the screen breathlessly as the waif-thin Ekaterina Gordeeva stepped onto a dark, pale blue ice rink and the audience held their collective breath. Her white boots looked too large, her bones too frail to hold her upright. She sailed onto the ice and the audience broke their silence, erupting into refrained applause. To the ghostly strains of Mahler's Adagietto she performed a tribute to her late husband and figure skating partner, Sergei Grinkov, for the first time stepping onto the ice-rink without him. Every movement she made was filled with pain and desperation, I wondered how she had the strength to inhale. Time passed. Wounds heal but the scars never fade.

Fifteen years later. The ice-dancing finals at the Winter Olympics in February 2010. A young Canadian couple step onto the ice, full of youth and energy. To those who remember it's impossible not to see the resemblance to the legendary, tragic Soviet couple who'd captured two gold medals in Olympics long past. It is only apparent when the music begins, the familiar strains of Mahler's Adagietto and the same choreography, this is the widow's performance, but at last performed by two. A century has not tarnished Mahler's exquisite love letter to Alma, the magic is not lost on modern audiences.