MTT Conducts Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

June 13, 14, 15 & 16, 2019

Overview

“This is a most beautiful Mahler Ninth. Tilson Thomas immediately establishes a profoundly rapt atmosphere” (Gramophone). Wallow in the velvety richness of one of the world's most celebrated Mahler symphonies when the San Francisco Symphony digs into the riveting soundscape of Mahler’s last completed symphony—the deeply introspective, transcendent Ninth.

Please be aware roads around Civic Center Plaza may be closed in preparation for the Clusterfest comedy event outside in front of Bill Graham Auditorium. Please plan for additional travel time and congested traffic conditions.

Concert Extras

Inside Music: an informative talk by Peter Grunberg, begins one hour prior to concerts. Free to ticketholders. Learn More.

At A Glance

MAHLER
Symphony No. 9 1910 | 90 mins
The Ninth Symphony is the last score Mahler completed. Some dark part of him would have wanted it so, for he entertained a deep-rooted superstition about symphonies and the number nine (see Beethoven and Bruckner). But for all his fascination with death, Mahler always chose life. Within days of completing the Ninth Symphony, he plunged into composing a Tenth. He had made significant progress when he died seven weeks before his fifty-first birthday.

Mahler wrote the Ninth Symphony in the whirlwind that was the last chapter of his life. He had resigned the artistic directorship of the Vienna Court Opera, signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, lost his four-and-a-half-year-old daughter Maria to scarlet fever and diphtheria, and become acutely aware of his own mortality when he received the diagnosis of a congenital heart condition.

It is too easy to view the Ninth Symphony as the composer’s farewell. The gestures of dissolution and parting with which this work ends are of an annihilating poignancy matched not even by Mahler himself; nonetheless, it is well to understand that Mahler cannot have meant this as an actual farewell. To insist on reading it thus is to indulge in a sentimentality that weakens the stab of this music.

Mahler begins with a very large movement whose basic tempo is semi-slow but which tends to spill over into a faster pace. The second movement returns us forcefully to earth. Mahler always loved the vernacular, and here is one of his fantastical explorations of dance music, ranging from clumsy and coarse to lilting and sentimental. The third movement Burleske is music of violent urgency while the finale is a slow movement whose weight and span approach those of the first movement. Grief gives way to peace, music and silence become one. Read More

Steven Ziegler is Managing Editor at the San Francisco Symphony.

Artists

Michael Tilson Thomas

Conductor

San Francisco Symphony

Program

Gustav Mahler

Symphony No. 9

MTT Conducts Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

Thursday

June 13, 2019

11:00PM

Davies Symphony Hall

Friday

June 14, 2019

11:00PM

Davies Symphony Hall

Saturday

June 15, 2019

11:00PM

Davies Symphony Hall

Sunday

June 16, 2019

5:00PM

Davies Symphony Hall

If you would like assistance purchasing tickets for patrons with disabilities, please call the box office at 415-864-6000.

Conductor

Michael Tilson Thomas is the Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, conductor laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra, and cofounder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony. He is a 12-time Grammy Award winner and has conducted the major orchestras of Europe and the United States.

Born in Los Angeles, he studied conducting and composition with Ingolf Dahl at the University of Southern California and as a young musician worked with artists including Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland. In his mid-20s, he became assistant conductor—and later principal guest conductor—of the Boston Symphony. He subsequently served as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the London Symphony.

In 1987 he cofounded the New World Symphony, a postgraduate orchestral academy in Miami Beach dedicated to preparing young musicians of diverse backgrounds for leadership roles in classical music. He has worked with more than 1,200 NWS fellows, many of whom have gone on to major musical careers.

MTT became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995, ushering in a period of significant growht and heightened international recognition for the orchestra. He led the Symphony in championing contemporary and American composers alongside classical masters, and as Music Director Laureate, he has returned to conduct the orchestra each season.

His discography includes more than 120 recordings, and his television work includes series for the BBC and PBS, the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts, and numerous televised performances. “Michael Tilson Thomas: Where Now Is” aired on PBS’s American Masters series in fall 2020.

Throughout his career, he has been an active composer, with major works including From the Diary of Anne Frank, premiered with narrator Audrey Hepburn, and Meditations on Rilke. Both appear on SFS Media’s Grammy Award-winning recording of his music. In 2023, Yuja Wang released a recording on Deutsche Grammophon which included his You Come Here Often?
He is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, a member of the American Academies of Arts and Sciences and Arts and Letters, a National Medal of Arts recipient, and a 2019 Kennedy Center honoree.

Three major recording projects were released in 2024 in celebration of his 80th birthday: Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas on Pentatone; The Complete Columbia, CBS, and RCA Recordings on Sony Classical; and Complete Deutsche Grammophon & Argo Recordings on DG Eloquence.

MTT Conducts Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

Overview

Concert Extras

At A Glance

Sponsors

MTT Conducts Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

MTT Conducts Mahler’s Ninth Symphony