Symphony No. 9 in D major

For Alban Berg, the first movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony was the composer’s highest point ever: an expression of love for the earth, a deep longing for peace and life, which, however, clashes with the awareness of an impending end. The music, in fact, seems to continually seek oxygen, but every momentum shatters against a destiny already written. In that surrender, however, there is no defeat. In 1910 Mahler looks one last time at the world with shining eyes, not to tell of the end, but to grasp again, for an instant, all the beauty possible. His farewell is not theatrical, but neither is it pacified: it is made up of suspensions, silences, fleeting reappearances. The tension never quite explodes; it is consuming. Even the moments of apparent serenity always seem on the verge of giving way. In the end, rather than concluding, this symphony suspends, as if the threads of music disintegrate, leaving us with the certainty that we have glimpsed something that does not belong in this world.