Mahler's Ninth Symphony BBC Proms

APPLAUSE Hello, and welcome to the Royal

Albert Hall. I'm standing high up in the gallery down below the stage

and arena are filling up, and there's a real buzz of expectation.

Tonight at the BBC Proms, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra

are here with their British Principal Conductor Roger

Norrington. There's just one work on the programme: Mahler's last

completed symphony, the 9th, a piece forged from three personal

hammer blows of fate - the death of Mahler's child, the loss of his job

as director of the Vienna Opera and the discovery of the illness which

would soon end his life. As so often, Mahler downloads his

tortured state of mind directly into the music, but the 9th

Symphony isn't overloaded with death and despair. Sure, it's full

of neurotic bombast and bitter, ironic humour, but there's hope

also, and at the end a kind of serene acceptance. Earlier today I

spoke to Roger Norrington and asked him if he thought this symphony

really was Mahler's life laid bare. I don't think he ever wrote a bar

which wasn't felt by him and wasn't about him in some sort of way. I

think that's absolutely right. People say the first four

symphonies were programmatic and after that it was and tract music.

He didn't write abstract music. He wrote film music, and he was the

star. Mall Earl often uses musical quotes in his material and also in

the 9th Symphony. What do you make of that? I think it's very

important. There are wonderful quotation in the last movement and

particularly one from Kintentotne Leader, but the one that has taken

a century to find is in the 1st movement because five times in this

movement he quote a Strauss Jr waltz from 1870. It was written for

the Opening Ball in Vienna, and Mahler evidently connected it with

his youth. He studied in the music, If einne building. He quotes it,

and the name of the waltz is Enjoy Life. And of course, that's exactly

what he couldn't do once he had been diagnosed with heart trouble,

so it's very, very touching. This tune keeps coming back and spurring

him on again, and a mixture of nostalgia and pure love. Of course,

the movement is in four, so he's putting it in four-time, which is

unusual, but there is this extraordinary - da, da, da, dum

# Da, de # Ya da, da, da #

That's all it is. It keeps coming back. There's little interval in

there - # Farewell

# Farewell # Which you hear over and over again

in the movement. This is a symphony of farewell. Roger Norrington, who

tonight conducts his last concert as conductor of the Stuttgart Radio

Symphony Orchestra. Sadly, Mahler never lived to hear his 9th

Symphony performed. He completed the orchestration in 1910 and died

the following year just short of his 51st birthday, and it wasn't

performed until 1912 when Bruno Walter, Mahler's assistant and

protege, conducted it in Vienna. Now, if you want to know more about

the symphony, you can access the programme online. Just go to

bbc.co.uk, and there's loads of information about the composer, the

music and the musicians, and also, if you want to follow the

conductor's every beat, just press your red button to access

MaestroCam with live commentary. If you have anything you want to share

with us about The Proms, join us on Facebook. Hey, why don't we try to

get Mahler trending on Twitter? So to conduct Mahler's great 9th

Symphony, here's Sir Roger Norrington.

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 4549 seconds

It is terrifying and paralysing as the strands of sound disintegrate -

the words of the great Mahlerian conductor Leonard Bernstein on

Mahler's Symphony No 9 given in tonight's performance by the

Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, leader Natalie Chee, conductor, Sir

Roger Norrington. I don't know about you, but for me the sound of

this orchestra is a revelation in Mahler, minimal use of vibrato,

incredibly bright woodwinds. The result is intensely bracingly

coloured. And here comes Sir Roger Norrington once again, an historic

night for him, his last night as Principal Conductor for this

orchestra. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. One doesn't

usually do an encore after Mahler 9th.

LAUGHTER But I just feel like doing one

tonight. And I thought the very piece would

be an elegy. It was written in 1909, exactly the same time that Mahler

was writing the symphony you've just heard, and it was written by a

great English composer almost exactly the same age as Mahler. Of

course I mean Edward Elgar, so I think this is a fitting tribute to

our Mahler year, and I hope you find it as moving as I do.

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 4549 seconds

Elgar's Elegy for Strings, Roger Norrington's own farewell gift with

the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra as he steps down as their

Principal Conductor. APPLAUSE

So we say farewell to this wonderful guest orchestra from

Germany. We'll be back at The Proms tomorrow night with the London

Philharmonic Orchestra as we move east from Mahler's Vienna to

Hungary and music from three giants of 20th century music, Kodaly,