Mahler in Manacor

For some its concerts in Palma, the Balearic Symphony Orchestra also takes the concerts on the road to Manacor.

Over three consecutive weeks, starting this week, the orchestra is doing just this, and so Manacor will be the venue for its performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5.

The first of his three middle period symphonies, it represented a significant change in Mahler's compositional style, notable for greater use of polyphony - two or more simultaneous lines of melody.

He nearly died of a brain haemorrhage in 1901 when he was 41, and during his recuperation he studied Bach and was to say that "all seeds of music are combined" in Bach's works, just as "God encompasses the world". "There has never been greater polyphony."

It took more than two years from the sketching of three of the symphony's five movements in summer 1901 for the orchestration for the whole work to be finished. It was then a further year before it premiered in Cologne in October 1904.