Performance
The piece is performed in concert less frequently than Mahler's other symphonies, due in part to its great length and the huge forces required. Despite this, it is a popular work and has been recorded by most major orchestras and conductors.
When it is performed, a short interval is sometimes taken between the first movement (which alone lasts around half an hour) and the rest of the piece. This is in agreement with the manuscript copy of the full score (held in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York), where the end of the first movement carries the inscription Folgt eine lange Pause! ('there follows a long pause'). The inscription is not found in the score as published.
The final movement was used as background music in one episode of the 1984 television series, "Call to Glory" and on an episode of the BBC's 'Coast' programme, during a description of the history of HMS Temeraire. It also served as background music (in full length) during the "Allegory" segment of the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics opening ceremony cultural show.
A section from the Fourth Movement 'Midnight Song' features in Luchino Visconti's 1971 film Death in Venice, where it is presented as the music that Gustav von Aschenbach composes before he dies.
The second movement was arranged by Benjamin Britten in 1941 for a smaller orchestra. This version was published by Boosey & Hawkes as What the Wild Flowers Tell Me in 1950.
The Adagio movement was arranged by Yoon Jae Lee in 2011 for a smaller orchestra. This version was premiered by Ensemble 212 with Lee as conductor in New York on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
Read more about this topic: Symphony No. 3 (Mahler)
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—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Kind are her answers,
But her performance keeps no day;
Breaks time, as dancers,
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“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)