Gustav Mahler: An Adagietto for Alma

Painter Gustav Klimt, the author of the famous painting The Kiss, was one of the guests in the evening at the Zukerkandl family's home in Vienna on November 7, 1901. When he realized that the young woman he had been chasing all around Europe for six years –since she was sixteen– was also one of the guests, he got shocked, but overjoyed, as well. The young girl, a budding composer, was called Alma Schindler, was now 22 years old and was regarded, sure enough, the most beautiful woman in Vienna.

Alma Mahler (1879 - 1964)

Alma made her grand entrance shortly after 8 p.m. Gustav crossed the room in order to greet her but the other guests blocked his way because they rushed to receive the guest of honor who was also entering the room at that very moment. A second Gustav was joining the evening. He was Gustav Mahler, the giant, the composer and director of the Vienna State Opera.
Gustav, the painter, gave up that very evening.

Gustav Mahler was 41 years old at the time. He was single, and as the director of the Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic, was at the height of his fame and international prestige. Gustav's fascination with Alma and vice versa was immediate. After two dates following that evening –Gustav invited her to a rehearsal and then to the performance of an opera by Gluck– the compose proposed to Alma with unusual words: "It is not easy to marry a man like me, and I must remain so". Alma didn't hesitate for long. Very shortly after, on March 9, 1902, they got married at a private ceremony.

Gustav Mahler, in 1899
(1860 - 1911)

But not everything had always been that simple for Mahler. Twenty years earlier, at the beginning of his career, Gustav had been hired to direct operetta in a small theater in Upper Austria, but the position was a tricky business, according to Alma herself, in his diary: "The father of  Zwerenz, the prima donna, appointed him conductor of the orchestra ... but in a very special sense ... His duties were to put the music on the music stands before each performance, remove dust from the piano and pick up the music again after each show, and while the intermissions he had to walk the little Mizzi Zwerenz in her stroller, around the theater".

It wasn't a glamorous start, of course. And Alma is possibly taking things a bit too far. What can not be denied is that it was by the hands of Alma –who sacrificed her own creative interest in favor of her husband's career– that Gustav Mahler advanced even more in his career reaching the peak a few years later, when he was hired to take charge of the New York Metropolitan Opera, for the 1907-1908 season.

Fifth Symphony - Adagietto
Nine symphonies composed Mahler, plus a tenth that remained unfinished. The same year of his union with Alma he began to compose the fifth symphony and finished it –it's a saying, for it was revised in many occasions for long years– in 1902 in his refuge of Maiernigg, next to a lake.
A work in five movements, the fourth one is probably which made it famous, the well-known Adagietto for harp and strings that Lucchino Visconti in his film Death in Venice, from 1971, raised almost to the category of a character by making it accompany a large part of the story.

Claudio Abbado conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.