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Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.9 – Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly (2004)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:29:57 minutes | 1,72 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Source: Qobuz | @ Decca
Recorded: June 2004, Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Mahler’s final completed symphony provides both a fitting conclusion to Chailly’s highly acclaimed cycle and a valediction after his decade and a half at the helm of the magnificent Concertgebouw Orchestra. It was the last work Chailly conducted as the orchestra’s music director, and he made this disc directly after that final concert. The work’s four movements are an epic 90 minutes of tumultuous emotions dominated by the motif of Death (by the time Mahler began composing the work in 1909 he knew that he had only a short time to live). The two outer movements, each lasting roughly half an hour, are concerned with calm resignation and the agony of farewell; the two central movements, a gruesome Scherzo and a dissonant ‘Rondo-Burleske’, are ruled by the demonic element of Death.

The Ninth is generally reckoned to be the most difficult of all Mahler’s symphonies to bring off, equally demanding for the performers and for the listener, and Chailly’s realization is as gripping as it is disturbing. The balance and clarity of orchestral detail, from the frenzy of the Rondo to the almost imperceptible closing bars of the final Adagio, is brilliantly captured.

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