Commentary
The New York Philharmonic’s performance of Gustav Mahler’s 9th Symphony, brilliantly conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, lived up to the piece’s immense reputation. Written in 1909, it is the last gasp of the Old World wrecked by the Great War. It left the audience in tears of melancholy reflection.
The ceremonial and traditional silence following the final movement was as tense a moment in music as I’ve ever experienced. Fascinating, isn’t it, that silence would be the most beautiful part of music?
“Although swathed in the myth and legend of a late work and pervaded by the grinning violence of death as well as a tormented despair,” writes David Vernon in “Beauty and Sadness,” “this symphony also communicates both the intensity of joy in existence and an acknowledgement of ultimate impermanence. The whole work is based on the conflict between these four elements—death, desolation, ecstasy and acceptance—and it is crucial we see it as a symphony which celebrates life as much as it dreads death. In fact, of course, the two are intimately and necessarily linked, for it is the threat of removal of the one by the other which creates the tension that governs the symphony.”…