Mahler’s Ninth Symphony takes you into another world.
Mahler’s Ninth was his last completed symphony, which he was destined never to hear. The music is shot through with premonitions of death and deep longing, but it also soars on a vision of celestial bliss.
“It’s beyond being dark or light,” says Ashkenazy. “It’s another world, on another level of feeling and existence. And when it fades away, with the final notes in the violas, it’s as if the last strain of matter is disappearing in the universe.”
There’s no other symphony like it: two introspective slow movements wrapped around Mahler’s trademark peasant waltzes and sharp parodies. The first movement, said one friend, was the most heavenly thing Mahler ever wrote; the quiet finale quotes the farewell motto from Beethoven’s Les Adieux piano sonata.
Mozart offers a brilliant antidote to the introspection of Mahler, with an Olympian concerto that’s as ambitious as it is inventive and whimsical. Mahler’s finale may feel like the end of the world, but for Mozart all the world was before him and his music smiles with the confidence of youth.
MOZART Piano Concerto No.13 in C, K415
MAHLER Symphony No.9
Vladimir Ashkenazy conductor
Steven Osborne piano
Pre-concert talk by Genevieve Lang in the Northern Foyer at 7.15pm.
These performances commemorate the 100th anniversary of Mahler’s death, on 18 May 1911.
REVIEW
Murray Black reviewing the concert for The Australian wrote:
"The great achievement of Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony ... was to sweep us away on this powerful emotional and intellectual journey.'
The finale Adagio is one of music's great symphonic utterances and the performers made it sound exactly like that. Their well-judged speeds and superb dynamic control maintained the music's ebb and flow as it reached a blazing climax before receding into nothingness. No one could have been left unmoved."
Read the full review here.
AUDIO PLAYER LISTING
Track 1 – MAHLER Symphony No.9: 1st movement
Track 2 – MAHLER Symphony No.9: 2nd movement
Track 3 – MAHLER Symphony No.9: 3rd movement
Track 4 – MAHLER Symphony No.9: 4th movement
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 463 738-2
Audio kindly supplied by Universal Music.
Mahler available for purchase.