Fasten your musical seatbelts for one of the most thrilling symphonic rides in the repertoire: Mahler’s truly epic Third Symphony, under the baton of Chief Conductor Jaime Martín. The forces of the MSO are bolstered by Young Voices of Melbourne, the MSO Chorus, and electrifying American mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis.

At the time Mahler composed this work in 1902, a ‘symphony’ typically had a standard structure comprised of four movements. In approaching his Third Symphony however, Mahler sought first and foremost to create a ‘world’, and to allow the shape of this ‘world’ to dictate the work’s final form.

It begins with a Dionysian funeral march as Summer arrives and the Greek god Pan awakes, before the flowers, animals, humanity, angels, and love bestow their wisdom upon the listener in the second half. This ancient world in two parts, comprised of five movements, embodied a radical modernity that challenged the very identity of the symphony.