I wrote about the same performance and recording earlier. This is the least popular of Mahler’s symphonies, mostly because of its gloomy nature. Mahler didn’t go through the best of times. His eldes daughter had just died, and he learnt he suffered from an incurable heart disease.
The location where in the early years of the twentieth century Mahler wrote these symphonies was in his holiday cottage in Maiernigg, a small village in the province of Carinthia in Southern Austria. In 1901 he built it there, to enjoy his vacations, but also to be able to write his symphonies without being disturbed. He wrote symphonies 5 to 8 there. The cottage is now a small museum.