Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, a work of huge emotional and structural range, was his first purely orchestral work since the First Symphony of 1888 (Naxos 8.550522), and his first orchestral work to dispense with both the human voice and overtly programmatic elements. The second most recorded of Mahler’s symphonies, it includes the ravishing Adagietto, a love-poem for the beautiful Alma Schindler, his future wife, and subsequently made famous by its use in Visconti’s film Death in Venice.