Talk on Mahler’s Sixth

On Friday, at 6.30 p.m., Martin Spiteri will give a presentation on Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in this month’s music appreciation meeting organised by the German-Maltese Circle Classical Music Group.

This will be held at Messina Palace, the Circle’s premises, 141 St Christopher Street, Valletta, and will last about 90 minutes.

A hundred years since Mahler’s death, the capacity of his music to speak to the widest audience seems to be growing still.

What bemused listeners in his time are the very things that resonate with us so powerfully now – passionate avowal mixed with self-doubt, enduring hope in the face of utter negation, moments of timelessness in the headlong rush of the every day.

It’s the contemporary tone of Mahler’s music that remains eloquent – the voice of one wrestling with what it is to live in the modern world.

A powerful and emotionally-charged symphony, Mahler considered renaming his Sixth the ‘Tragic’. It reaches a shattering conclusion in the finale that represents “the hero, on whom fall three hammer-blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled”.

A video recording of a performance of the symphony by the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez held in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall in 2003 will be shown.

Admission is free.