Dlouhá

Mahler did not live on Dlouhá Street for long. He moved there in February 1886, staying for three weeks in rooms rented from the printer Ernst Schulz. While there, he helped his roommate Johannes Elmblad learn vocal roles. Might Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony have been one of those vocal parts, which the Swedish artist sang at the end of the month under Mahler’s baton at the Estates Theatre (then called the Royal Provincial German Theatre)?

In 1912, the building U Modré růže (At the Blue Rose) was torn down. At the former site of Langengasse 18, the present building bears the house number 14. The building outlived Mahler by just one year.

And which Mahler symphony is the longest?

The Third. On the new Czech Philharmonic recording, it will be one hour, 42 minutes, and one second long…or, if you prefer, one hour, 42 minutes, and one second short. In the book Mahler’s Fictional Letters (Mahlers fiktive Briefe) by Harmut Haenchen, the composer has the following to say:

“Today I realised, to my horror, that the first movement will be half an hour long, or perhaps even longer. What will people say about that? They’ll tear me to pieces. This work is truly brief, indeed even terse, even if it lasts two hours… A creative force held in check for years has proven to be irresistible; there is no escape!”

The symphony even turned the conductor Semyon Bychkov into a truant. Once, as a student at the Glinka Conservatoire, when he entered the hall where the symphony was being rehearsed, he was so mesmerised that he forgot to return to class. Only later did he learn that the music he heard was the beginning of the symphony’s last movement with the subtitle “What Love Tells Me”.

And what does love tell you when you listen to the last movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony on a little island beneath a sycamore?