London Philharmonic Orchestra | Mahler's Emotional Extremism

Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1
Mahler Symphony No. 9

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor
Nicholas Angelich piano

In 1907 the ‘three blows of fate’ that Mahler had prophesised in his Sixth Symphony became a reality. Ill, exhausted and very nearly defeated, Mahler faced spiritual and physical annihilation. He countered it by throwing himself into life with renewed passion and insistence. His last completed symphony, the Ninth, would be a desperate farewell. In the words of his biographer Deryck Cooke, it represented ‘a ‘naked encounter with the arch-enemy himself, who invades the music, turning everything to dust and ashes’. That arch-enemy was death. Four movements, a new orchestral language and an emboldened emotional extremism: the ultimate Mahler symphony, live at Royal Festival Hall.