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So, that's it. With Gustav Mahler's 'First', the classical symphony comes to an end. This work, which will be performed at the first Young Concert of the 2026/27 season by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, marks the beginning of music that speaks in quotations and stark images. Mahler's sonically powerful Symphony No. 1 is so overwhelming that it is hard to know where to focus your attention. To the unpleasant whistling at the beginning, which is supposed to sound 'like a natural sound', i.e. as it would have sounded before the invention of music? Or to the false cuckoo calls of the clarinet, which plays a fourth instead of the naturalistic cuckoo third? Or to the blaring fanfares and the unnaturally high-pitched double bass that plays 'Brother Jacob' in a nasal register and is intended to be performed 'with parody'? Indeed, there is no symphony that definitively buries an era and cleanses the ears quite like Mahler's 'First'. True to the motto 'Roll Over Beethoven', he draws a thick line under the symphonic tradition of the 19th century with this work.

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