Carnegie Hall: San Francisco Symphony: Mahler #9

The program at yesterday evening's concert by the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall consisted of only one scheduled work.  But that one work, Mahler's enormous Ninth Symphony is certainly one of the greatest in the repertoire and a personal favorite.

The work consists of four movments, Andante comodo (D major), Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb (C major), Rondo-Burleske: Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig (A minor) and Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend (D-flat major).  As others have pointed out, the work reverses the usual order found in symphonic movements by having the slow music come before and after the faster tempos just as Tchaikovsky had done in his own Sixth Symphony.  As a result, in the finale the music dies away rather than ending in a crescendo.

Mahler died before ever having heard his Ninth performed.  By the time he finished it in 1909, he had known for two years that his heart condition was terminal and that this work might very well be his valediction.  Already he had suffered the loss of his daughter and had been forced to resign as Music Director of the Vienna Opera.  In many ways, this work was an attempt to come to grips with these catastrophes.  The program notes quote biographer Michael Kennedy on this point as it relates to the symphony's muted ending:

"Might this not be his [Mahler's] requiem for his daughter, dead only two years when he began to compose it, and for his long-dead brothers and sisters?"

The Ninth is a specialty of Michael Tilson Thomas; it was the first piece he conducted when he made his debut with the SFS in 1974.  Together he and the orchestra have recorded the entire Mahler cycle in a 17-CD set which won seven Grammy awards.

One online article quotes Thomas as saying:

"Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 is, for me, perhaps the most important and emotionally satisfying farewell symphony.  I would not see the world or experience things as I do without that piece. Were I never to hear it again, it would not be a hardship, because it’s inside me, completely. To perform Mahler's Ninth is about being fully engaged with both those who are playing it and those who are listening to it."

Yesterday evening's performance, which lasted approximately 90 minutes, was filled with excitement throughout and in the end came very close to reaching the sublime heights to which Mahler aspired in composing it.  I had already, on Tuesday evening, heard the WQXR broadcast of this same orchestra and conductor performing an entirely different program and had been greatly impressed by the excellence of both.  Yesterdays evening's triumph only reinforced that impression.