Mahler at the Local Symphony

Last night and tonight we were able to attend the New York Philharmonic for programs of late Mahler.  After sitting in an orchestra for so long, compromising listening and remembering to play, it is a great pleasure to simply listen.  Each player is meaningful, each section, the sound of the hall, the interaction of the musicians, the balance and blend, the ensemble.  These were things to which I was very attentive as a performer and so they continue to strike me as a listener.

The music of late Mahler is filled with the edge of mortality.  To me it seems he was trying to write himself a lullaby, some song of comfort that would reconcile the beauty that he loved in the world with the emotional and physical pain that living was for him.  He never heard either of these works, Das Lied von der Erde or his Ninth Symphony.

But we get to hear them, relived hundreds of times beyond him.  But still the final tonic never comes.