Tony Duggan commented:

>As to the oboe glissandi in the fourth movement, they are a performance
>tradition ...

I have been looking at different versions of the performing parts
(unfortunately not the manuscript scores).  I see the word "hinaufziehen"
(pull upwards) at various iterations (but not all) of the oboe/cor anglais
major minor thirds in the fourth movement.

There are two problems here:

1.  Not all parts of all versions (Kalmus recent, Kalmus ca 1960, unknown
circa 1920) agree of the word "hinaufziehen", whereas the word "Naturlaut"
appears in all of them.

2.  Where Mahler wants a glissando (as in Mahler 2, 9) he has marked
"glissando" in the parts I have seen.

So what does "hinaufziehen" mean in this context? Clearly some people have
interpreted it as "glissando" (see Tony's comments on those recordings and
performances), others (Horenstein, Karajan) have made the oboists either
play straight or slightly "bulged".  I have a funny feeling that the right
compromise might be to finger F# to A when playing the F natural --> A
"hinaufziehen" and use the p-->f or pp-->ff markings to help lip down the
F# to F natural and lip within that note up before hitting the A which is
naturally slightly flat on a Viennese oboe but goes more in tune with
volume ...

All this fuss about a few notes ... But what notes!

Christopher Rosevear