Traditional Tuesday: Mahler Symphony 1 Movement 1

I am looking forward to attending a live performance of Maher's 1st Symphony this October and thankfully this Blog has given me the motivation I need to listen to it ahead of time. Today I have included a video of the full symphony but I have only listened to the 1st movement (I plan to include the other movements in future posts). In this video Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic, I love his joyous facial expressions.

My thoughts and observations as I listened:
Mahler opens the symphony with sustained strings peppered with an eerie two note motif being passed around in the winds (this returns often throughout the piece). A low clarinet arpeggio interrupts and then quickly the two note motif returns until we hear a quiet brass fanfare.
Strings start to piece together a theme, the horns enter with a church-like melody followed by a short/quiet brass fanfare. A pizzicato moment leads us back to more passing along of this two note motif which then starts to build with dynamics and intensity.
Cellos enter at 4'17" with a bouncy call and responses occur in various sections of the orchestra. The orchestra continues to work together with a sort of question and answer portion.This continues to build until all/most of the orchestra is included in the main themes. Then the symphony returns to passing the sounds around. Beginning around 6'35" I am picturing a calm meadow with lots of animal friends peering out until they feel it is safe to celebrate together, which they do beautifully. When it's time to get back to their safe spots the flute 8'40" (bird) watches over everyone and sings everyone to sleep where they return to passing around the 2 note motif. At the 10 minute mark the drums and cello mark the beginning of the entrance of darker sounds that add a new feeling of awareness while the 2 note motif continues. The horns  come in at 11'10" with a new theme that plays off of the motif. This seems to me to reassure all the other sections (animals) to relax and celebrate as they come in and out with little themes that compliment each other so well that I feel I want to go to this place they've created. The violins finally play a dance like melody at 11'28" until the the flute reminds everyone of the earlier stated melody. It seems like someone is lost at 13'38" where the two note motif gets dark and builds with stronger dynamics. Lower sounds build slowly with some interruptions in the brass until the trumpets celebrate with a fanfare followed by a horn bugle call at 14'48". All is happy once again, as if they found what they were looking for, everyone joins back in with a dance-like melodic theme. I can feel that we are entering the end of the movement as things are building in joyful excitement. The tympani  plays short rhythmic patterns followed by orchestra responses until finally full orchestra ends with a great tah dah! (16:15 ends the 1st movement)

[What's New Wednesday: Beck]