Mahler Symphony No. 4

The evening

If Mahler’s first three world-encapsulating symphonies come from an adult’s point of view, his fourth wonders how a child’s perspective might be different. But the childhood dreams Mahler weaves are not all naïve. Though we eventually arrive at Mahler’s childlike vision of heaven – In Das himmlische Leben, the part he composed first – menace and terror are present too.

To create Swim, Cassandra Miller took two chords by Robert Schumann, repeated them until they blurred, and then took them through a series of variations as suggested in an essay on swimming by the poet Anne Carson. Miller’s abiding image – of Robert Schumann, swimming in Carson’s Canadian lake – could only come from the mind of a committed dreamer.

In 1838, Felix Mendelssohn wrote to violinist Ferdinand David, describing ‘an E-minor theme that keeps running through my head, preventing me from thinking about anything else.’ From Mendelssohn’s dream came one of the great violin concertos.