# Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G major Premiered 25 November 1901, by the Kaim Orchestra of Munich, conducted by the composer, with Margarete Michalek, soprano. Mahler said he wanted his symphonies to be "like the world... they should embrace everything." His first three had already embraced a vast span of creation. The First is about the spirit of Nature and a hero coming of age in it; the Second considers death, judgment and resurrection; the Third catalogues all beings, from the inanimate through plants, animals, humans, angels, to divine love. Where could Mahler go from there? Taking new, intimate perspective, he wrote his Fourth about childhood. It is his most pleasant, bright, and — in his words — "naïve," but it was also deeply personal in a way he knew would be misunderstood. In a letter to his wife Alma, he wrote: "it is that part of me which is still the hardest for you to accept, and which in any case only the fewest of the few will comprehend..." And indeed the first reactions of the public and the press confirmed these fears. They expected a Mahler symphony to be epic and tragic; when they heard the Fourth's sunshine and innocence, they called it shallow, effeminate, and worse. Over time, however, it has become his best-loved and most performed symphony. The structure is best understood by starting at the end. The final movement is a song "Life in Heaven," which Mahler had written nearly 8 years before commencing work on the symphony. It is a song from a child's point of view; in the score, Mahler directs the soprano soloist to sing "with child-like, bright expression," as she describes a carefree life of dancing, playing, and good food in the company of the saints and martyrs. This can be seen as naïve, but to imagine a child in heaven is to imagine a loss, and it was a loss that Mahler knew too well. Eight of his thirteen brothers and sisters did not survive to adulthood. The first three movements prepare the way for this beatific vision. The first begins with sleigh bells and flutes before broadening into an expansive, unhurried melody in the strings that rarely loses its smiling tunefulness. The second movement is a humorously macabre scene that Mahler privately titled "Friend Hain Strikes Up" — where Friend Hain is a fairy-tale bogyman whose name is often a euphemism for Death. The image is Death as a country fiddler, striking up a tune. A solo violin is instructed to tune their instrument high, to add twang, and to play "like a medieval fiddle." The Adagio is a mostly soft, tranquil world that unfolds a theme and variations patiently, before a triumphant transition to E major. This leads into the finale: the child's view of heaven. That this vision of innocence was imagined by a man who had lost so much of it makes the symphony's radiance all the more extraordinary.