Mahler: Adagietto - Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor

A touch of eternity: "No one understands my accursed Fifth Symphony", complained Mahler after the failure of its early performances. Yet today it is his most frequently performed symphony, thanks in part to Visconti's masterly film adaptation of the Thomas Mann novella Death in Venice, where the dying Gustav Aschenbach wanders through Venice to the ravishing unearthly strains of the "Adagietto". This yearning movement, often viewed as a declaration of love to his wife Alma, stands at the centre of the rough and jagged world of the Fifth, forming an ethereal and timeless sea of tranquillity in a symphony that mirrors the mental abysses of its emotionally torn creator.