I doubt that there is, in the entire history of classical music performance, a more moving ending than that of Mahler’s 9th Symphony as performed by the Lucerne Festival Orchestra during one of its last concerts under its founder, the incomparable Claudio Abbado (d. 2014). By itself, the mystical ebbing away of those simple, forlorn melodic arcs that the violins extend into the encroaching silence is nothing less than a transformative experience. Yet what gives this transfiguration of sound an altogether magical, incomparable depth is the play of expression on Abbado’s face. Already marked by the cancer that by then he knew would soon take him away from this world, Abbado appears to be carried away, along with those last, searching notes sounded by the strings. When the last note has faded, the vast auditorium in Lucerne is transfixed by two full minutes of total silence. Kudos to the cameraman and editor, who chose to keep the focus squarely on Abbado’s face. Nothing could better visualize for us Mahler’s unprecedented realization of the transition from music (“Klang”) into ultimate silence than Abbado’s gaunt, aged face with its inward-looking expression. The audience, too, appears to have grasped the profundity of what was transpiring before them.
Romans 8:26 ) "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans."
Abbado truly embraces the moment of being In unison with his orchestra and the audience. Such a rare, beautiful and deeply moving experience. I wish I were there... thank you for posting this.
so beautiful Jesus said, "I am the ressurection and the Life, whoever believes in Me, though He may die, will Live" (John 11:25) Despite being such an important message of Christ, through music this saying of His can be inteperted as both a mahler 9 finale or a mahler 2 finale Isnt that awesome?
Preparing one's last breath in awe to the beauty of life. Rarely can musical pauses and a final silence be so intense and meaningful. Mahler-Abbado: two giants.
....even the musicians stay still for a while. I live in Bologna and every time I pass under his last home in Piazza Santo Stefano I always dedicate him a fast prayer.
This is one of the very few performances of Mahler's Ninth Symphony in which one forgets that the composition was never given the finishing touch by Mahler himself on the basis of first performances conducted by the composer. Just as Mahler used to do with new orchestral compositions of his own. Mahler completed this Ninth in 1910 and only after his death (1911) did the work premiere in Vienna on 26 June 1912 under the direction of his young friend and protégé Bruno Walter. The Adagio-finale with its 'dying' last bars is generally considered to be Mahler's 'Abschied vom Leben'-gesture, due to the tragic developments of his health in the last period of his life.
Abbado was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2000. This concert happended nine years on into his battle with the disease. I would imagine his struggle with this serious illness and with his mortality had something to do with the emotion and utter silence at the end of this symphony. Absolutely riveting.
A few years ago I suffered a silent heart attack and was rushed to hospital in an ambulance with screaming sirens. My blood pressure plummeted and I was dying. I was calm and registered every moment. I remember saying to the paramedic "Can I go now?" and he said "No, hang in there, we'll get you back!" I was okay with dying. I have always loved the Mahler 9. Claudio Abbado was a saint.
In the zen tradition of Japan, great masters would know when their last day had come. They would dine and laugh with their students and friends, and at dinner's end, tell everyone "I must go now." The students would find the master sitting in meditation the next morning, smiling, and already passed.
Mir geht es gut, Gott sei Dank. Vor ein paar Wochen hat mein ältester Enkel geheiratet, fast genau acht Jahre nach diesem Herzinfarkt und ein paar Wochen zuvor wurde mein 15. Enkelkind, ein wunderschönes kleines Mädchen, geboren. Ich bin froh, dass ich die Möglichkeit hatte, mit meiner Familie zu leben und mich zu freuen. Mahler schrieb nicht nur die Neunte, sondern auch die Zweite Symphonie. Jeder Tag, an dem mein eigener Tod näher rückt, ist ein unermesslicher Mehrwert. Mit den Worten von „Der Abschied“: Ewig, ewig.@@DSdt63
As von Karajan said of the Ninth - "it is music coming from another world...it is coming from eternity". Thank you for uploading this. It is a treasure beyond words.
0:40 to me, that quartal m7 chord is everything. I compare this way of interpreting it with Bernstein's and you can see here in the conducting gestures all the differences a different human being's life can make. Abbado clearly comes to a stop, explicitly asks for a silent measure, index finger in front of his lips, then he doesn't count the chord for the orchestra, he just let them go with it, accompanying with long, high, minimal gestures, like a rarified atmosphere. Conversely, see Bernstein; his vision is made more clear from his commentary, but he's more rhythmical; his baton is held downward and then the chord comes and he counts it with a very linear, horizontal, crossed gesture, like he's painting some invisible but firm spider web from the center to each limits. Abbado's is something suavely coming up, something that is already going downwards before that moment; Bernstein's is something declaring a statement IN that very moment, like it's from that very moment it is going to fade out. Truth is, all in all, at the end of the day you have to let it go, and in these ways of interpreting we get a glimpse, perhaps, of what life is worth.
As interesting as your analysis is, there is a seven second delay between the audio and the visual (see the violins at 1:18 for a clear proof of this). In fact what you see when Abbado stops conducting is actually for the silence that has just happened, and not for the quartal chord. In fact none of the gestures in this video relate to what you are hearing.
yes as the other commenter said this video/audio is off. See Jose Manuel's upload "Mahler - Symphony No. 9 - Abbado - Lucerne Festival Orchestra 2010"; Abbado puts his index finger in front of his lips when the high celli bend the Ab up to an A (the upward hand motion he does right before the finger on lips signals the bend). Then the sound dies as he lifts his left hand higher and then back down, with such sad eyes, before his right hand signals the downbeat again and the camera moves to see the violin section and the music sounds again.
I really honor the fact that Maestro Abbado stood there in silence, letting the music settle into the air. He allowed everyone to realize that even silence is such an impactful thing. What a beautiful ending to a very great piece of music!
Probably the most beautiful Italian-Austrian embrace since Mozart. Mahler's perfection could only be Abbado. Abbado's last goodbye could only be Mahler.
Abbado was one of the very few conductors to play the last page of the Finale slower than the main Adagio tempo. It's marked ”Adagissimo ” by Mahler. Most conductors actually speed up especially when they've taken a ridiculously slow tempo for the rest of the movement.
It is really amazing how some well-known musicians simply don't know how to read a score properly. It's sometimes the equivalent of reciting Shakespeare as if you were a football commentator... Mahler was exceptionally precise in what he wrote down in his scores, as was Beethoven for that matter. It is a real crime not to bother becoming at one with the intentions of great composers. They were not fools, after all - it's the least one can do. It takes a lot of homework, but just look at what the result can be...!
The silences were a regular thing when Abbado conducted. Especially late career. Anything with a piano ending. The Lucerne audience was well trained in this.
Absolutely brilliant piece if music, and wonderful leadership by the fantastic Claudio Abbado. The fact that this concert was in 2010, it's sad to hear that four years later he would come to die in his home country if Italy (in Bologna, he was born in Milan). The way the audience and orchestra sat in silence knowing that this would be the last concert Abbado would conduct, and the way the silence was created, the way he made the music flow and the gratitude he received from the public must have been so magical. Thank you for this upload - more people really need to see this!
I think Abbado very much had the feeling that his life was coming to an end when he conducted Mahler 9th. Nevertheless it wasn`t his last concert, he conducted until 2013, one year before his death...
Without doubt the best performance of this work. Watching this one can finally understand the profession of being a conductor. Their work is not so much in the concert, but at the rehearsals, when they can "teach" the orchestra to perform with such sublime perfection.
Wonderful and reminding me of a concert in Cologne 1991 or later with Abbado as the new head of the Berlin Philharmonic and this symphony. The same silent respect after the close. It was breathtaking - noone was doing anything. It was a transcendent moment without time...
Touching! Thanks for posting this excellent clipping to show the last 5 minutes of music playing, 2 minutes of entire silence, plus 4 minutes of passionate audience applause. Actually there are 3~4 more minutes audience applause after this clipping. It would be even better to show them all to reflect the significance of this performance conducted by Maestro Claudio Abbado.
It is easy enough to understand. The silence is the offering. The offering of the exquisite last hour and a half to the Great Silence. Solemn, and full of all human understanding. The silence is extended in hope of response and it is sustained for as long as a human can do so. For us all on this plane, it is all we can do.
Claudio Abbado died on Jan. 20th aged 80 and on his passing the economist magazine wrote in their obituary "There was, said Claudio Abbado, a certain sound to snow. It did not come from walking on it. If you stood on a balcony, too, you could hear it. A falling sound, fading away to nothing, pianissimo, like a breath. You could hear it only if you listened to what some supposed was silence." and he was right. There is a very quiet sound to falling snow that you don't realize until you're outside standing in a snow storm and listening to it fall.
La 8va,9na y 10ma de Mahler son muy emotivos sus finales, por eso sensibiliza y moviliza tanto al oyente, adicionalmente Abbado q fue un gran director y buena persona generó tanta admiración por parte del público y de los mismos músicos.
Amazing - absolutely stunning. There's nothing quite like a long silence in a room with hundreds or thousands of people. (Also, did anyone else notice the actor Bruno Ganz, who played Hitler in the famous movie Downfall, in the audience? You see him at 8:42 )
AND this is the reason why I LOVE MUSIC--- BEING TRANSCENDED RIGHT INTO HEAVEN--- and actually, wishing that I COULD STAY THERE-- the effect this music has on the conductor, after so many many years--- and the effect it has on me--- I AM TOTALLY SPEECHLESS.
This must be from a different night than the other performance on RU-vid which ends in similar fashion. His gestures are slightly different at the end. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mrJ8e51__yE.html At the end of the performance we are watching here he never looks upward. But in above link he is looking up. That is always the version I have seen. Now suddenly this new one appears and nobody notices that it’s a different night. The DVD lists dates: Aug 19-21, 2010. I realize there may be different camera angles. He was clearly making different faces at the end of these two performances. I am not crazy. Is the complete version available? Any details would be greatly appreciated
As you already said the dates were 19-21, considering these are live performances it's either possible that different companies had different productions to show them to and editing was slightly different (but I doubt it) or simply 19 20 21 were dates of three performances of the ninth, it's very common to repeat since Lucerne Festival was quite a huge event thanks to Abbado and the videos differences you find could be from being two different (but still very similar) concerts.
Based on your keen observation, I think that the silence at end was rehearsed somehow beforehand, conveyed to audience probably by the orchestra and the production team so as to create an even more ethereal and transcendent period at the end, but the performance and Abbado and Mahler's music certainly deserve and earned it
We have to thank Leonard Bernstein for that interpretation. Other commentators have pointed to the success and happiness Mahler was enjoying when he wrote the 9th. Somewhat at odds with the "superstitious Mahler terrified of the 'curse of the 9th'" narrative that Bernstein would have us believe. It's true that the 9th is Mahler's most personal work with many self-referential quotes and bitter-sweet moments (the four-note motif that dominates the last movement was first heard in the 3rd Symphony, for example) but it's hard to believe he was writing his own death, as it were.
Is it rude to say that I wish there was no clapping, at all, like the orchestra walks of stage and everyone either sits there or exits silently. I would never clap after this, nor smile, i feel it is just as one would not clap or smile after one died on there death bed.
At the time of this performance Caludio had already been battling cancer. This will go down as the most compelling performance of Mahler's 9th and last Symphony ever performed, and it comes with irony in that Mahler's emotions in this work contrast hope with despair - he was thinking about death. The depth of Caludio's emotion in this performance is beyond words. How utterly profound and compelling. This, for me, is my favorite Symphony ever composed. Astonishing that this music was banned during the period of the Nazi's. Those last 5 minutes was so intense - he was so deeply immersed in the Symphony.
