Symphony Concert
Orquesta Nacional de España
David Afkham conductor
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 9 in D major (1909-10)
Concert without interval
Mahler’s Last Symphony
Under its principal conductor David Afkham, the Spanish National Orchestra returns to the Palace of Charles V with one of the most profound works in the repertoire: Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Composed between 1909 and 1910, the Ninth occupies a singular place in Mahler’s career and in the broader history of the symphony music. It is a work imbued with an awareness of loss and a retrospective gaze that does not renounce formal innovation. In these final years, Mahler experienced a period of personal and creative crisis, marked by illness, the death of his daughter Maria Anna at the age of five, and his dismissal as director of the Vienna State Opera. All of this translates into music of an introspective nature, in which irony, fragmentation, and the progressive dissolution of the discourse coexist with moments of extreme lyricism. The Ninth seems to waver between vital affirmation and farewell, with a final movement that fades away in an almost suspended calm.
