Years ago my girlfriend and I attended a performance of Mahler 9 with Maazel conducting the NY Phil. My girlfriend, who was also not a "classical music person", absolutely loved the performance. But she told me afterward that after the 3rd movement ended she wanted so badly to stand up and yell "Yeeaahhh!!!" Can't say I blame her!

I think I saw that same Haitink/Boston Mahler 9 (early 90s)...it wasn't memorable, but I have always blamed a young couple who were in directly in my balcony sight line. They couldn't have been less interested in being there, passing notes the whole time and whispering. I couldn't ignore them. Also heard Seiji Ozawa (Aso BSO) and Gunther Schuller conduct it. It's my favorite symphony and though I agree the Adagio wins us over no matter what, it's the First Movement Andante comodo that impresses me the most: absolutely devastating, sublime music. If that works in performance, I'm basically happy.

It’s worthwhile even for a person who’s not particularly musically conversant to look at a score video for Mahler’s 9th on KZfaq. Even in its quietest, stillest moments, there is a LOT going on. You really see how there could never be something like Webern’s Five Pieces For Orchestra without Mahler.

I have been listening to this symphony for over 50 years and I am still discovering things in it I had not noticed, usually because of the performance. It happened last year when I found the KZfaq recording of Barenboim conducting Berlin Staatskapelle orchestra, specifically the moment early on -00.45- when the Cor Anglais plays the theme: maybe because the camera was on the player, but I had never noticed this brief moment before with such clarity -did he ask her to play it louder than usual? It has not only captivated me ever since, but led me to enquire why the Cor Anglais is such a plaintive instrument -consider its use in Tristan und Isolde, Dvorak's New World Symphony and other pieces that escape me right now. Not sure Barenboim loves Mahler, unusually he conducts the 9th with a score and often has his face in it, though I did see him conduct the Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen with Fischer-Diskau in London the week after Britten died, and that was wonderful. So even this KZfaq performance has its moments, and is one of the faster Mahler 9's.

Thank you for your sympathy towards the Berlin trumpeter… as my teacher said to me: “if you are going to play trumpet, you have to accept the fact that every mistake you make will be heard for three blocks…”… sometimes we miss…

One of my best Mahler 9s was Gustavo Dudamel's guest performance (with LA Phil) in San Francisco few years ago. I was a bit skeptical for some reason, and I had never heard Dudamel live before, _and_ the second harpist was hired as a contractor for some reason, and... it was _magnificent._ I don't know what happened that night, just magic.

Very fortunate to have heard great performances of M9 at Severance Hall in Cleveland under Haitink, Kubelik, Rozhdestvensky, and (with the Akron Symphony) Zander.

I saw this work in London with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer, earlier this year. I'd never heard it before, and wasn't prepared for the effect of that last movement on the audience (me included). I dont think the performance was anything out of the ordinary (I think the reviews were quite mixed), but my goodness! Barely a dry eye in the house. The woman next to me was practically bawling. But I'd go again in a heartbeat ❤. Unkillable!

After listening to Abbado's Mahler 9 on headphones I had what I can only describe as some kind of transcendental experience, as if the world had ended, very strange and never happened again so I simply have a very soft spot for Abbado although still concede the things you mention. I am very jealous you once were able to hear Bernstein play the piece. My only live experience was one time at the Concertgebouw, although I am afraid, I've totally forgot the conductor. I agree that this piece is unkillable, but for some reason it did seem to fall flat on that occasion, no idea why, maybe just me. However, I do agree that almost any performance I hear I just love, more for the music than for anything else.

I heard a horrible Mahler 9 a little over ten years ago by the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall under Franz Welser-Most. It sounded like the music was being strangled. I found it odd that it was so bad since just two months prior I heard them give a performance of Mahler 3 at Blossom that blew my socks off. You’re point is absolutely right. As bad as that Mahler 9 was, the audience loved it and couldn’t help but to give it a standing ovation. I just sat there wondering what the hell was going on...

We were listening to this in the car during a trip to Seattle when my (brilliant) daughter noticed: "Hey! This sounds like the ending to the movie E.T." Sure enough, right down to the spot where the spaceship suddenly disappears into a rainbow, you can almost match the musical ideas up to each other. Mahler's "Farewell to the Earth," right? I have to say, if that was what John Williams was thinking, my hat goes off to him!

I have seen the symphony quite a few times in live performance by different orchestras and different conductors. As distinct from the various recordings I have of it in live performance I find the first movement very often fails to fully "work" in live performance. I found in a few of the live performances I have seen that a real expressive "peak" of the performance was that premonition of the finale in the Rondo Burleske with the trumpet solo (largely because the trumpet was so beautifully played) and in those performances the finale was wonderful. In the one live performance where I truly adored the first movement (Solti with the Chicago Symphony on tour in Australia in the 1990s, very similar in playing style to the recording he made with them, on the slow side but tightly played) I found it so wonderfully exhausting that the rest of the symphony felt a little less expressive than usual.

I have to tell you something.....when I learned of the death of conductor Leonard Bernstein, I played this same day this slow movement from this 9th by Mahler.....his DGG recording.the one with amsterdam.we were talking about this movement which prophesied the music to come (berg, schoenberg etc)...at least that's what I read.....or again....this 9th closed the period of romantic music etc etc....also music which speaks of death.unfathomable 9th.

With your first video in this series being Pathetique by Tchaikovsky, I am definitely detecting a pattern--here is another piece with a mesmerizing slow finale that in some measure dominates the work and negates any sins that might have come before. I find the series interesting because it suggests that there are some pieces that have a sort of self-generating momentum. You can interpret them if you like, but if you just play more or less what the composer wrote on the page the piece will do the rest. I recently played in a Mahler 9 and that was more or less my experience of the piece, and especially the last movement. Like the Tchaikovsky finale, it's pretty clear what Mahler has in mind and you just ride the wave.

only Norrington killed the Mahler 9 :(

Very funny yet insightful comments. Top marks sir ! If only there much brutally honest reviews like this of the classical world. Say it how it is haha. And yet ..yes Mahler s music remains far beyond poor performance

I see this piece as the pinnacle of romanticism. Doesn’t get any more passionate or grande then this. I think the ending exemplifies this. There is no further Mahler could’ve gone in terms of tonality, texture, and expression then the withering away of the strings. This is not a « boom hooray » symphony. This is the pinnacle of a symphony as an experience.

I wonder if you’d consider the eighth a “work that never seems to work”. Sure there are a few recordings that get it right, but as you’ve pointed out, it’s such a problematic piece, especially when conductors get their hands on it…