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Mahler himself never heard Das Lied von der Erde. He completed it in 1909, having begun it two years earlier when a friend gave him Hans Bethge’s The Chinese Flute, a collection of German translations and adaptations of Chinese poetry. He had recently learned that he had a heart defect and in the poems he found an expression of his own philosophy – that the beauties of Nature renew themselves year after year and although mankind enjoys them for only a brief span, the earth blossoms again. What may have been envisaged as a song-cycle became a song-symphony in six movements. He orchestrated it in 1908–09 and told Bruno Walter it was the most personal work he had composed. One can trace a symphonic structure, with the short third, fourth and fifth movements forming a kind of scherzo. A large orchestra is used, but is often treated like a chamber group.

from notes by Michael Kennedy © 2003