Gustav Mahler, Symphonie No.4 - part 4 Sehr behaglich

The Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orkest and boy soprano Helmut Wittek, directed by Leonard Bernstein. Pictures are taken from the beautiful Concertgebouw. Bernstein’s recording of June 1987 is unique in that it features a boy soprano (Helmut Wittek) instead of the usual female soprano. The German former boy soprano, Helmut Wittek, was a member of the Tölzer Knabenchor as a soloist and now works as a sound engineer! **The Fourth Symphony (1901) is Mahler’s most accessible and congenial work. Unlike his first three symphonies, it has no explicit program, though its sound world evokes all sorts of extra-musical things like sleigh bells, lambs’ bleats, oxen’s bellows, and even the devil himself. His shortest symphony, on the surface it is his least ironic and most naive. Part of the Fourth’s appeal is the technical detail of its composition: it was written backwards. Mahler composed the fourth movement finale, a song for soprano and orchestra, in 1892, nine years before the