Classical music is worth the effort

Last week I attended a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No.3 at the Barbican Centre in the City of London. Gustavo Dudamel conducted his former orchestra, which he nurtured to global fame: the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra from Venezuela. It was a special night, as pretty much every performance of this symphony is.

Mahler’s third is gigantic in every sense. His level of ambition for it was insane. He set out to do nothing less than capture the whole world: the creation of the earth, mountains and valleys, flora and fauna; all of music, high and low: the village band, church choir and Romantic orchestra; and all of humanity: joy and nostalgia and pain and terror, and, above all, love. 

To achieve this, he decided to compose the longest symphony anyone had ever written. Instead of the conventional four movements, he wrote six. The entire piece takes more than 90 minutes to perform, which when he wrote it was about twice the length of a standard symphony and is still pretty much the longest in the repertoire.