MUSICAL EVENTS: FAREWELL SYMPHONY

Michael Tilson Thomas remains exuberant in the final phase of his career.

- ALEX ROSS

The molten monument that is Mahler's Ninth Symphony is routinely described as the work of a man facing imminent death. It took shape in the summer of 1909, two years after Mahler was given a diagnosis of rheumatic heart disease. Leonard Bernstein liked to argue that the strange, staggered pulse of the opening bars replicates symptoms of Mahler's condition. The immense emotional range of the symphonic narrative that ensues-desperate longing, false triumph, vertiginous collapse, desolate meandering, damaged nostalgia, rancid rage, full-throated lamentfinds resolution in twenty-seven legendarily transcendent bars for strings alone. The markings tell the story: adagissimo (as slow as possible), mit inniger Empfindung (with deep feeling), ausserst langsam (extremely slow), ersterbend (dying away). Mahler died in 1911, with his Tenth Symphony unfinished.