Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly - Mahler: Symphony No.9 (2004/2014) [HDTracks]

Mahler’s final completed symphony provides both a fitting conclusion to Chailly’s highly acclaimed cycle and a valediction after his decade and a half at the helm of the magnificent Concertgebouw Orchestra. It was the last work Chailly conducted as the orchestra’s music director, and he made this disc directly after that final concert. The work’s four movements are an epic 90 minutes of tumultuous emotions dominated by the motif of Death (by the time Mahler began composing the work in 1909 he knew that he had only a short time to live). The two outer movements, each lasting roughly half an hour, are concerned with calm resignation and the agony of farewell; the two central movements, a gruesome Scherzo and a dissonant ‘Rondo-Burleske’, are ruled by the demonic element of Death.