Susan wrote:

>I wonder, though, about the fourth movement, the adagietto: it's
>beautiful, very moving and all that (for strings and harp), but if it were
>played at a more lively tempo, wouldn't the parts fit together better? I
>felt like I heard the funeral march/gloomy point of view of life, then took
>a breather to fall in love, then heard the comic view point of existence.
>If the adagietto were faster, the sequeway would be smoother.  Anyone?

There's a piano roll of Mahler playing the Adagietto, and his tempo
is rather brisk by today's standards (between 9 and 10 minutes time, I
believe, although I don't have a recording).  The quickest version that
I know is Bruno Walter's, who zips through in 7:43 but without giving the
impression of "zipping"; it works wonderfully in his hands.  I tend to
prefer the quicker versions to the slower, overly romanticized ones (of
which there are many!).

However, if your impression was that this was a love song then you were
correctly perceiving the composer's intention. The piece was written for
Mahler's soon-to-be wife Alma.

Tim Dickinson, TDWARE
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