Alan Gilbert marked his debut as Musical Director of the New York Philharmonic in 2009 with a performance of Gustav Mahler’s colossal Third Symphony. He has now also selected the work for his return to the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. The former first guest conductor of the orchestra is a renowned interpreter of Mahler. Since first encountering Mahler’s work at the age of nine, the composer’s grip on Gilbert has never loosened. With compelling performances around the world, Gilbert repeatedly demonstrates his unique understanding of Mahler’s powerful scores.»Now, imagine a work of such magnitude that the whole world is mirrored in it – one is, so to speak, no more than an instrument on which the universe plays.« With these words Gustav Mahler once described his Third Symphony. He initially gave the six movements poetic titles that mark the work as a kind of musical evolutionary history. Starting with pristine nature in the first movement, the development – after stations with plants, animals, man and the angels – finally culminates in a great song of love in the profoundly moving final Adagio. The composer later accepted that his symphony eludes any formal or linguistic definition: »It distances itself so clearly from everything that came before that it can hardly be called music; it is simply a colossal, mystical, natural sound.« read less