Symphony No. 3
“My symphony will be something that the world has never heard before! The whole of nature finds a voice in it and tells of the kind of profound secrets that might be sensed in a dream! […] Even I myself sometimes have an eerie feeling in certain passages, and it seems to me as if I hadn’t written them.” – Gustav Mahler

Symphony No. 5
This work also poses a challenge to both audience and musicians in other respects. “The individual parts are so hard to play,” Mahler wrote to his good friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner,“that they really require soloists. Some very bold passages and rhythms just happened to slip into the music because of my precise knowledge of orchestra and instruments.” This holds especially true for the solos, of course, with the first few measures for the trumpet being just as dreaded as the horn solo in the Scherzo movement, since they both have to be played without the safety net of an orchestral backing.