The Ninth Symphony is the last work completed by Gustav Mahler. It is considered by many researchers and commentators not only as his swan song, but also as a symbolic summary and closure of the entire era of Romanticism. This extraordinary piece, full of emotions, will be performed by Giancarlo Guerrero and the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic.

“This is music from another world, from eternity,” is how the famous Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan summed up The Ninth. The tone of his words partly reflects the circumstances in which the work was created – many of Mahler’s friends, as well as artists who followed, saw in this work a conscious farewell to life by the dying artist – and partly the nature and mood of the music. The symphony is structured in an unusual way – two movements maintained in a moderate and slow tempo surround two movements in a fast tempo: a dance stylised as a landler and a wild, brutal rondo. It is impossible not to notice that the mood in these two movements is dominated not so much by humour as by mockery, derision and anger. The two outer movements are full of great depth, beginning and ending with episodes imbued with extraordinary focus, calm and contemplation. At the end of the final Adagio, Mahler included an unusual performance cue – ersterbend (“dying”), which further emphasises the mood of farewell. The quote from one of the songs from Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder cycle, placed at this point in the score, gains a transcendental meaning as first violin plays a melody corresponding to the words: “It’s a beautiful day in these heights.”