
"Mahler inherited the romantic conception of music as an expression of a quest for spiritual reality ... he expressed a four-sided conflict between a devouring love of life, a spiritual need, a skeptical intellect, and an existential dread of ultimate meaninglessness." --...

In his monumental Ninth Symphony, one of Mahler's greatest and most popular works, the composer experimented with the four-movement symphonic form, producing a masterpiece of musical innovation, satiric writing, and poetic drama, expressed in purely instrumental terms. Alban...