Recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on 3 December 2022, the Ninth is his final completed Symphony, easy to speak of it as a farewell to life, a leave-taking, yet he planned a Tenth and left enough of it for numerous completions to be undertaken (Joseph Wheeler the first, Deryck Cooke the most-accepted of those that followed), the opening Adagio (more or less finished in Mahler’s own hand) for long the only music played from his ultimate opus.
Vladimir Jurowski opens the Symphony in a way that suggests a funeral rite is about to unfold, although over the course of the first movement he underlines the volatility of the music, suggesting a desperate lust for life, a flexibility that invests an emotional charge that isn’t always apparent – that with life comes death, Mahler scripting both, swinging between a desire for the former and an acceptance of the latter, vividly relayed by a superb LPO in detail and colour, and in its connection to Jurowski and identification to the music – whether in the first movement’s massive climaxes or chamber-like interaction, or the timpani heartbeats (Mahler’s medical downfall) or ritualistic bells. Jurowski leaves the door open for the further movements – spiking and spicing the contradictory dance-measures of the second and their heady development as well as soulful reflection and contrasting witticisms; the third-placed ‘Rondo-Burleske’ is uncompromisingly fast, its dispassionate rhythms wonderfully chiselled from an unfazed LPO (antiphonal violins, basses to the left, helping to sustain the musical argument, the celestial middle section tenderly turned and affecting, the return of the opening section electrifying in its drive to and over the edge, the Symphony’s sole appearance of a side drum ideally vivid (11:55). The slow Finale, which I understand has had audience bronchial intrusions airbrushed out, can be heard as vying between Planet Earth and the next place, respectively a full-throated hymn (bass line strikingly in relief) and ethereal expression – chillingly moving (catching me off-guard emotionally) – leading to a transcending climax and an immaculate paring-down to nothingness. Impressive, imposing and instructive on LPO–0139.