Season Opener
Klaus Mäkelä Anders Hillborg
Gustav Mahler

Anders Hillborg (b. 1954) draws on one of Gustav Mahler’s visual sources of inspiration in his orchestral work Hell Mountain. Mahler often found inspiration in nature, and during the 1890s he spent several summers by Lake Attersee, where he composed, among other works, his Third Symphony.

Southeast of Attersee lies the imposing Höllengebirge – literally “Hell Mountain.” The conductor Bruno Walter once visited Mahler at his cabin, and as Walter admired the steep cliffs, the composer remarked: “You don’t need to look – I’ve already composed it all!”

“My best work … mostly of a cheerful character,” was how Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) described his Symphony No. 7 after completing it in the summer of 1905. Since then, listeners have never quite agreed on its character—Mahler’s Seventh is rich in interpretive possibilities, evoking associations ranging from Rembrandt’s painting The Night Watch to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s magical tales.

Much about the symphony was unconventional for its first audiences, from its five-movement structure to its instrumentation, which includes cowbells, guitar, and mandolin. Both the second and fourth movements are titled Nachtmusik (Night Music), with a ghostly and at times grotesque Scherzo in between. Mahler reportedly said that daylight only arrives in the fifth and final movement—a radiant and powerful finale.