LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA
|
Claudio Abbado
conductor
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 9 in D major
“Once again I have played through Mahler’s Ninth Symphony,” reported Alban Berg in a letter to his wife Helene, “and I find that the first movement is the most magnificent thing he ever wrote. It expresses an exceptional love for this earth and a longing to live in peace on it and to continue enjoying nature to the very depths of one’s being—before death arrives.” Farewell, death, and transfiguration are the central concepts that always come to the fore when considering Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. “O youth! Vanished! O love! Blown away!” So noted the composer himself across the pages of the opening movement in the autograph score. But Mahler’s music speaks of more than bittersweet pain and resignation before fate: The seraphically beautiful Adagio that Mahler composed for the final movement is like the music of the spheres, opening a window into another world. Mahler believed in a continuance of life after death.
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