Alan Gilbert Conducts Mahler’s Symphony No. 6

On The New York Philharmonic This Week, we hear a 2010 performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in A minor. In the words of then Music Director Alan Gilbert, who conducted this performance: “Throughout the work you can feel the desperate search for relief and happiness … but, for me, there’s always the sense that it is on the verge of collapse. In the end, one is in fact left with a sense of total despair, the feeling that the gorgeous place we caught glimpses of during the symphony is closed to us forever.” To open the program, we hear two overtures, one from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and the other from Schubert’s The Magic Harp.