Mahler Foresees Imminent Destiny with Three Hammer Blows, Schoenberg Commemorates Holocaust victims with Music. Only Arts and Love Can Bring Hopes Through Tragedies and Predicaments.

The symphonies of Gustav Mahler represent the culmination of turn-of-the-century addiction to the cult of the colossal. And there is no more colossal symphony than Mahler’s Sixth, subtitled the Tragic – a 90-minute symphonic leviathan that invariably leaves listeners emotionally drained at its conclusion. To portray the overwhelming, apocalyptic vision of Man grappling with Fate, Mahler employed an enormous orchestra. In addition to enlarged wind and brass departments, the percussion takes on the proportion of an orchestra in itself, including cowbells, hammer blows, and two sets of timpani. The message of tragic destiny in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony finds its counterpart in Schoenberg’s short but no less potent A Survivor from Warsaw, a harrowing account of the horrors of wartime oppression.