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Beautiful, beautiful playing from the BSO with Marin Alsop conjuring those achingly reposeful lines closing Mahler's valedictory Ninth Symphony.

The finale's expressive warmth burned with intensity born of the ineluctability of Mahler's medical condition and Alsop's inspirational musicianship.

Bound with the most homogeneously rich string tone, searching swathes of sound and peacefully reflective episodes expired in breathless emotion.

The opening movement's extended funereal ambience invokes Mahler's imagination, looking down upon the cortege expressing rage in screaming turmoil and contrasting calm inevitability. Alsop's skill in marking up the tensions and conveying the solaces mastered the trick of keeping that cortege on the move.

The Scherzo's disaffected ländler, once enjoyed in the composer's youth, become twisted in piquant disillusion and if the Rondo-Burleske's defiance only really surfaced in the closing, violent organised chaos, this was still among Marin Alsop's finest achievements.

Mike Marsh

7:35am Thursday 8th May 2008

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