If the Ninth Symphony is Mahler's musical 'dark night of the soul鈥�, then the Sixth is the afternoon, dark with storm clouds, that preceded it. Although written at the happiest time of the composer鈥檚 life, the work builds gradually into a shattering frenzy of despair. 鈥楾he hero,鈥� wrote Mahler, 鈥榠s assaulted by three hammer-blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled.鈥� It was a musical vision that was to prove all too prescient for a composer who would soon suffer a series of life-changing personal heartbreaks.

The Sixth Symphony is a Viennese work, and who better to champion it than the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted here 鈥� in the first of its two appearances this season 鈥� by regular collaborator Daniel Harding.

There will be no interval

Image: Daniel Harding 漏 Julian Hargreaves