Visions Of Childhood

Richard Wagner wrote his Siegfried Idyll as a birthday present for his wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son, Siegfried. Nowhere else in music is there so tender an evocation of those fragile and precious first weeks of life. Gustav Mahler’s 100-minute Third symphony and his Fourth grew out of the musical material in the short, beautiful song which forms the final movement of the Fourth Symphony, which concludes these Visions of Childhood.