Originally, Anders Hillborg intended to compose something without any reference to Gustav Mahler. But, as so often happens, things turned out differently once he began working on the newly commissioned piece. Mahler’s descending fourth crept in, and even the enormous stacked chord – known as ‘the scream’ – from the first movement of the Tenth Symphony came knocking at Hillborg’s door. According to the Swedish composer, this might well be the essence of creation: finding a balance between your original ideas and what happens during the process of developing them, a balance between intuition and rational decision-making. Like Mahler, Hillborg would ideally prefer the audience to listen to his music without any explanation. So here, we do no more than lift a corner of the veil.

As in many of Hillborg’s orchestral works, Hell Mountain places sound itself at the heart of the composition. The composer treats the orchestra as a vast sonic creature, producing sounds whose origins are not immediately traceable to specific instruments. This approach stems from his work with electronic music in the 1980s, during which he discovered spectral harmony and later translated that experience into acoustic terms.

The opening of Hell Mountain sees complex chords unfold like a gently rippling sea, each wave cresting at a different moment. Every voice in the texture emerges from nothing, each reaching its own dynamic peak in time. Like sunlight glinting on the water, different voices in the chord momentarily rise to the surface – an effect reminiscent of György Ligeti’s Lontano. From the swell of harmony, slow melodic lines detach themselves, each from a different part of the sonic beast. Recurring, suddenly loud chords crack like a whip – either restraining or rousing the creature. Eventually, from a softly sustained chord (Mahler’s shimmering summer air, or perhaps the squeak of a cart over gravel, if you prefer), the oboe breaks free with the characteristic descending fourth known from Mahler’s First Symphony. The gently rippling sea returns at the end.

The definitive first edition of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony in D major, published in 1899, was a long time coming. Ten years earlier, an initial, five-movement version of the symphony had been launched in Budapest; four years later, a second version was performed in Hamburg. Mahler said he drew inspiration for this work from the novel Titan by German writer Jean Paul. That book focuses on a tempestuous hero who resembles Goethe’s Werther and ultimately destroys himself. Mahler initially described this symphony as a ‘Symphonic Poem’ in which the first two movements depict the hero’s younger years, complete with ‘youth, fruit, and thorn pieces.’ The two final movements deal with the ‘human comedy’. At first, Mahler had included comments for each movement, which he later withdrew. Reading his words about the opening movement, however, make it easy to hear nature awakening in the early morning. The mysterious introduction, ‘like a sound from nature,’ develops into a lavish spring tableau in which Mahler – not coincidently – uses the main theme from his song Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld from the Lie­der eines fahrenden Gesellen. In this newly awakened nature, the woodwinds mimic the call of a cuckoo. This sunny spring morning was originally followed by a movement Mahler called ‘Blumine’, although he later scrapped it from the symphony. In its present version, the second movement is a cheerful, rustic scherzo, complete with a middle section featuring an Austrian Ländler; here, the composer is clearly indebted to Anton Bruckner. Mahler instructed the horns to play with their bells up – ‘Schallrichter auf!’ In his programme notes, Mahler said of this movement: ‘Set with full sails.’ 

The third movement sets a different tone, featuring Frère Jacques in a minor key, played as a funeral march. The inspiration for this movement comes from a woodcut by Moritz von Schwindt based on a work by Jacques Callot, a seventeenth-century printmaker and draftsman showing animals accompanying the coffin of a deceased hunter to his grave. ‘At this point’, says Mahler, ‘the piece is intended to express a mood that is sometimes ironically funny, sometimes eerily brooding.’ Mahler then adds a melody from his Lie­der eines fahrenden Gesellen to the childhood song: Lindenbaum, with instructions to play it very simply, like a folk tune.

The fourth movement arrives ‘like a bolt of lightning emerging from the dark clouds.’ Mahler describes this finale, the ‘Dall inferno al Paradiso – From Hell to Paradise – (Allegro furioso) as the sudden outburst of despair of a deeply wounded heart.’ Some of the dynamic passages in this turbulent movement reprise themes from the first movement. The hero, accompanied by marches and fanfare, seems destined for glory – but according to the composer, he will not die until the Second Symphony – and the work concludes with a glorious hymn to nature. The horn players are instructed to stand and overpower everyone else, ‘including the trumpets.’ Mahler seems to have viewed composing this and other symphonies as ‘creating a world by using every technical means at his disposal’. With his First Symphony, Mahler succeeds with aplomb, immediately displaying many of the characteristics he would later develop in the other ‘worlds’ to follow. For example, we hear marches and waltzes from his youth, his memories of military bands, his fondness for folk songs and his love of nature. These and other elements come magnificently to the fore through Mahler’s knowledge of the orchestra, gleaned in his years as a conductor; as a composer, Mahler understood how to magically conjure up entirely new sound colours.