Music Director Jahja Ling will lead the San Diego Symphony this weekend in uninterrupted performances of Gustav Mahler‘s Sixth Symphony — nicknamed the “Tragic” — which many critics rank as his finest.
The 80-minute masterpiece is considered the great Austrian conductor and composer’s purest expression of the joy and sublime beauty that a human life may offer, even if in the face of inevitable and sometimes inescapably cruel death.
In the symphony, Mahler reduces the essence of life to a climactic chord shifting from major to minor, from light to dark, throughout.
The symphony debuted in Germany in 1906 and was first performed in the United States in 1947. It was last performed by the San Diego Symphony in 2008.
Concerts are scheduled at 8 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 29, and Saturday, Aug. 30, at Copley Symphony Hall in downtown San Diego. Tickets are available online.
