Mahler’s Second Symphony: Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Complete Their Mahler Cycle
Sydney Opera House, Concert Hall: 23 November 2011
repeats and broadcasted live on ABC Classic FM on Monday 28 November
Mahler - Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Resurrection
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Vladimir Ashkenazy - conductor
Emma Matthews - soprano
Michelle DeYoung - mezzo-soprano
Sydney Philharmonia Choirs
Brett Weymark - chorusmaster
If a person did come to understand the true nature of reality and the universe, why we exist and die and how we exist after, if they could answer in one the curious person's every "why?" in the endless chain, could that thought even be solidified into words? or even rarefied into music? If it could these words would at best be the ultimate "inarticulacy of the new"; or if this person glanced off some truth tangentially and put it into words they would sound like a madman or a prophet or at best a poet. Is music any more articulate than words here? Music is more articulate perhaps in its being more akin to the primary "image" of a thought before it is put into words — prose words anyway — it need not commit itself to one of the set of concrete objects or abstract concepts allowed by language. Then again I don't want to do language a disservice since it can deal in these images, especially in poetry, and anyway music is like language in that there is a certain grammar of sounds which make musical sense; an infinite freedom amongst all the audible sounds would lead to infinite chaos, or at least just bad music. This is not how music evolved in any case, but instruments can say things outside of words' ken (and vice versa).

