With a Hammer / SMS 6
Program
Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra
Pierre Bleuse conductor
Gustav and Alma Mahler had just married and celebrated the birth of their daughter. In his Sixth Symphony, the composer nonetheless incorporated the powerful, hollow crash of a huge wooden hammer to illustrate the dramatic fall of an axe. Alma believed that these blows, which her husband had foreseen in the last movement of the symphony, truly foretold three family tragedies. Could Mahler’s genius, in the happiest period of his life, really have sensed that fate would be merciless and that its course could not be changed?