Finale of the 78th Artistic Season

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything. This is how Gustav Mahler described his Symphony No. 3. More than just a composition, he envisioned it as a musical universe. He began work on it in 1893 and developed it intensely during the summer of 1895, at 35, while serving as the director of the Hamburg Opera. Though busy with conducting duties, Mahler spent every free moment at Austria’s Lake Attersee – away from the city’s noise and close to nature, which became the very source of inspiration for this monumental symphony.

Initially planned in seven movements, each bearing a symbolic title, Mahler later decided not to publish them. However, the preserved structure reveals his vision: the piece was to begin from the lowest level of existence – The Awakening of Pan – and move through various forms of life: What the Flowers Tell Me, What the Animals Tell Me, What Man Tells Me, up to the voices of angels and the highest realm – Love. It was not just a symphony about the world-it was a world: multilayered, gradually evolving, and unpredictable. Mahler completed the first movement in 1896, but the entire work was premiered only in 1902 in Krefeld, under his baton.

The form of Symphony No. 3 is unconventional: six movements, the first alone lasting around 30 minutes-a dramatic, self-contained structure. It opens with martial rhythms and raw brass calls, especially from horns and trombones, then shifts toward subtler textures. In the third movement, we hear the call of a cuckoo. The fourth features a contralto solo singing verses from The Midnight Song in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The fifth features women’s and children’s choirs singing a folk text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The culmination is the sixth movement-marked “very slow”-which doesn’t explode in a final fanfare but ends in radiant serenity instead.

Initial reactions were mixed. The scale and spiritual depth enthralled some; others found it overwhelming, complicated, or lacking formal cohesion. But one thing was certain: Mahler had created a symphony that could not be ignored. To this day, it remains one of the most ambitious achievements in orchestral music, not only for its sheer scale but also for the depth and breadth of its subject matter. It’s not merely about the world – it is the world.

We close our 78th artistic season with this masterpiece – a season that, like Mahler’s symphony, has sought to embrace as much as possible: colour, emotion, and story.
Thank you for being with us – for joining us in this journey, for helping us build this world – concert by concert.

Excerpt from Mahler's Symphony No. 3 performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle: