Solemn Closing of the Art Season 2026/2027

Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 in D minor, completed in 1896, is one of the composer's most extensive works and represents a thrilling attempt to create a musical vision of the world. The original idea was to divide it into programmatic links relating to the next stages of nature and human experience — from inanimate matter, through the world of plants, animals and man, to divine love. Mahler eventually gave up on them, leaving the music the ability to function outside of simultaneous narration. The monumentalism of the work is supported by a powerful performance apparatus: symphony orchestra, solo alto voice, female choir, children's choir and instruments playing offstage.

The first part begins with a monumental entrance based on low wind instruments, followed by a solemn theme performed by eight horns. The collision of marching rhythms, wind signals and passages of a lyrical nature creates music of extraordinary diversity. In the following links, Mahler reaches for ever more subtle means.

The second part brings a stylized minuet, the third - a scherzo, in which the motif taken from the song Ablösung in Sommer and the distant signals of the post trumpet play an important role.

In the fourth part, the alto voice intones a song to the words of Friedrich Nietzsche's Zoroastrian Tako, after which the women's and children's choir reaches for the lyrics of a folk song from the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, leading the music from a reflection on human existence to a vision of love. The final, monumental Adagio abandons the text in favor of pure instrumental metaphysics — its broad, hymnic phrase leads to a radiant, majestic climax in D major. Mahler masterfully combines elements seemingly distant: monumentalism and intimacy, dance and philosophical reflection, everyday life and transcendence. Symphony No. 3 incorporates almost every kind of sound into the narrative, and its extensive form serves above all to direct the space for the experience of nature, man and transcendence.