Simon Halsey on Mahler’s Third Symphony (15 min.)

Almost everything in Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony is out of the ordinary: its length, its instrumentation, its number of movements. There is however in particular a remarkable wealth of stylistic levels where both the grandiose and the simple, the other-wordly and the everyday cross paths. In February 2011, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Rundfunkchor Berlin and Sir Simon Rattle performed the work as part of their Mahler cycle. In an introduction, chorus master Simon Halsey presents the work.