Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd May 2026 | 20:00 h. Teatro de la Maestranza
Saturday, 23rd May 2026: Andalucía Sinfónica. Almería - Teatro Maestro Padilla
GUSTAV MAHLER: Sinfonía nº6, en La menor, “Trágica”
Conductor: György Györiványi Ráth
The Sixth Symphony, composed between 1903 and 1904, is the reverse of the Fifth, although it was also created “with and for Alma”, whom he portrays in the second theme of the first movement. Mahler composed it driven by a mysterious and tragic force, which gives its name to a symphony in which there is no programmatic intention and which presents a network of cyclical interrelationships between its movements. It features a large brass section and a notably increased percussion section.
The work respects the tradition of four movements, with a notable length to the last one, which ends on a sombre, almost nihilistic note. Critics have explored the symbolism of the work, in which cowbells represent loneliness; the xylophone, the devil's laughter; the hammer, the blow of fate... Alma defines it as ‘the most personal of his works, and also a prophetic page’ because ‘it anticipated his own life in musical terms’. Thus, the three blows of the hammer in the Finale were premonitory of events such as the death of his daughter at the age of four, his forced resignation from the Vienna Opera and the diagnosis of an incurable heart disease, which would lead to his death in 1911.
For the composer, his Sixth Symphony was an enigma that could only be understood by listening to the five previous ones. For Leonard Bernstein, only a humanity that has suffered the atrocity of two world wars is capable of understanding this symphony.
Juan Lamillar