“My Sixth is finished … I think I’ve done a good job.”—With these words, Gustav Mahler wrote to his friend Bruno Walter in the summer of 1904. Behind this simple remark lay the completion of a work of immense inner tension.
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After the dress rehearsal for the Sixth Symphony, Mahler asked a friend who was not a musician what impression the music had made on him. The friend was so overwhelmed by the power of the work that, sobbing, he could only manage to say, “How can a man of your kindness express so much cruelty and mercilessness?” Mahler replied solemnly, “It is the cruelties that have been inflicted upon me, the pains I have had to endure.”
The Sixth is a work full of abysses and eruptive violence: trombones and trumpets, woodwinds bursting forth shrillly, powerful timpani salvos, and the clangs of cymbals and drumbeats pile up into a “resounding chaos”—a soundscape of elemental force.
Alban Berg summed up the uniqueness of this symphony in a single sentence: “There is only one Sixth—despite the Pastorale.”
Instrumentation
- Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
- Vladimir Jurowski, conductor
Program
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor
Special Notes:
- Pre-concert talk: 7:10 p.m., Ludwig van Beethoven Hall, Steffen Georgi
- Pre-concert talk: 7:10 p.m., South Foyer, Steffen Georgi
Additional information
Dates
May 2027
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