Jakub Hrůša Conductor
Bamberger Symphoniker

Programme
Gustav Mahler Symphonie Nr. 9

»My symphonies exhaust the content of my entire life; in them, I have set down what I have experienced and suffered, truth and poetry in musical notes. And to a skilled reader, they would indeed transparently reveal my life.« (Gustav Mahler) We want to arouse the »curiosité« of our Parisian audience with a monumental work – and at the same time prove that an interest in composers’ biographies is a sign not of trivial curiosity, but of a thirst for knowledge. Often musical works reflect actual events from their composers’ lives. Mahler in particular is often recognizable as the protagonist of his philosophically influenced works, which carry him through the ups and downs of existence. When he sketched his last complete symphony in the summer of 1909, secluded in his composer’s cottage, his world had been shattered. His four-year-old daughter Maria Anna had died, he had become increasingly estranged from his wife Alma, and he had been diagnosed with a heart valve defect. In this work, he left behind a highly emotional rollercoaster of feelings ranging from deep gloom, melancholy, and pessimism to consolation, from earthly tragedy to transcendental rapture. While he regarded the composition of his early symphonies as »building a world«, the Ninth is more concerned with deconstructing that world. It bids a retrospective farewell to everything that constituted his artistic thinking. Quotations from earlier works appear alongside folk elements, and the Finale is a heartbreaking Adagio movement – all in all, a musical parable of living and dying: in the draft score, Mahler noted the words: »Farewell! O youthful days! Vanished! O, love! Gone with the wind!«