Gustav Mahler Symphony no. 9
Conductor Claudio Abbado / LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA including MAHLER CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Mahler’s 9^th Symphony

This August, as has become a celebrated tradition, the MCO will return to Lucerne to perform several concerts as part of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA and two programmes on its own.  In 2003, Claudio Abbado declared the MCO “the heart” of the LFO; since then, the MCO has been instrumental in the life of the Lucerne Festival. Last year’s programming, which also took the LFO and MCO on their first trip to China, featured Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. This year, the LFO will continue Abbado’s Mahler cycle with the monumental Symphony No. 9—a timely choice, as 2010 marks the composer’s 150^th birthday, as well as the 100^th anniversary of the piece’s completion.

Mahler wrote his 9^th Symphony, his last finished symphony, after having been diagnosed with a serious heart condition. This diagnosis, coupled with the death of his daughter two years earlier, are perhaps what have inspired many critics to interpret the work as haunted by the spectre of death; as Alban Berg wrote in a letter to his wife, “the first movement is the most heavenly thing Mahler ever wrote. It is the expression of an exceptional fondness for this earth. The longing to live in peace on it, to enjoy nature to its depths—before death comes. For he comes irresistibly. The whole movement is permeated by premonitions of death.”

The second and third movements, marked Scherzo and Rondo: Burleske, both express a wild and rebellious spirit. The second movement, an ironic interpretation of an Austrian peasant tune (a Ländler), tempers nostalgia for a “simple” life with grotesque and mocking orchestration and a tempo slightly too slow to depict carefree peasant life. Veiled musical allusions to Mahler’s other works also invoke a world that extends beyond the pastoral. The third movement, a furious dance, displays at once Mahler’s unsurpassed skill at manipulating the orchestra as an instrument and a slightly bitter take on another more “carefree” form.

It is the last movement, marked Molto adagio, which is often read as Mahler’s swansong, his farewell to earthly life. Its slow unfolding does not reflect the bitterness of the earlier movements, but instead seems to signify an acceptance of fate—and through this acceptance, a kind of transcendence.

The MCO at LUCERNE FESTIVAL
Interview with Claudio Abbado