Gustav Mahler: Titan —Les Siècles/ François-Xavier Roth (Harmonia Mundi 905299
François-Xavier Roth conducts the orchestra he founded in 2003, Les Siècles, in an early incarnation of Mahler’s famous Symphony No. 1. When the composer conducted the work in Hamburg in October 1893, the work was known as Titan, described by Maher as a “Tone poem in the form of a symphony in two parts and five movements for large orchestra.” Conductor Roth says, “The musicians of Les Siècles play the historical instruments for which the composer conceived and wrote” this score. “We therefore took as our starting point the inventories of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra—of which Mahler was later artistic director—and observed that the instruments he wanted the orchestra to use were mainly German and Austrian in style.” This recording employs Viennese oboes, German flutes, clarinets and bassoons, German and Viennese horns and trumpets, and German trombones and tubas, all built quite differently from other contemporary instruments. For the stringed instruments, bare gut for the higher strings, spun gut for the lower. This is a unique opportunity to hear afresh the symphonic poem that became in 1896 Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony, which established him as one of the foremost symphonists of the modern era.