Philipp von Steinaecker delights with Gustav Mahler’s Fifth in its original sound.

At the train station in Toblach, it smells of freshly made hay and manure, the famous Dolomite mountain range of the Three Peaks is hidden behind thick fog, soon it will rain. The street village in the Pustertal is an hour’s train ride east of the Brenner motorway and is inseparably linked to the composer Gustav Mahler, who died in 1911. Coming from New York, he spent the summers of 1908, 1909 and 1910 nearby, here he celebrated his 50th birthday, here is his famous composing house, here he wrote the “Song of the Earth”, the Eighth and Ninth. Nowhere else can you get so close to him and his music. But it can be even closer. And that is thanks to Philipp von Steinaecker.