Mahler

The Seventh was the last of Mahler's symphonies to be played by the Philadelphia Orchestra in its surprisingly cautious approach to that repertoire. It appeared here for the first time in 1978, and when Klaus Tennstedt led it last night at the Academy of Music, it was only the third time it had been played here. The reasons for its rarity were the very reasons for the momentous impact it made last night. More than 90 minutes long, the piece seems to be made of thousands of fragments - themes that fade, recur and merge in the composer's private visions.

Last night's Philadelphia Orchestra performance at the Mann Music Center left me both dazzled and puzzled. The sixth and final movement of Mahler's immense Symphony No. 3 was given a reading under guest conductor Zubin Mehta of such intensity and passion, such subtlety, concentration and heartfelt drama, that I found myself literally breathless and even momentarily dazed at the end. This was orchestral playing of the very highest order, and...

Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky said he finds German songs difficult, but in his debut Thursday with the Philadelphia Orchestra he sang a Mahler cycle in a way that suggested they are a deep part of his musical being. He sang Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in the first part of a Mahler program conducted by Myung-Whun Chung. The songs represent an intriguing choice for a debut, for they have none of the crowd-pleasing bravura of Verdi arias or the charm of other operatic pieces apt for baritone.

Friday afternoons at the Academy of Music can have a soporific effect, induced as much by tired audiences as by often-tired programming. Yesterday's offering of works by Mark Kopytman, Mahler and Richard Strauss, with their feverish passions and exuberant colors, countered any sluggishness in the post-holiday crowd. The Philadelphia Orchestra concert was conducted by Israeli Gary Bertini, who introduced the work of compatriots Kopytman and the folksinger Gila Bashari, who performed Kopytman's 1981 Memory.

Some of the most revelatory Mahler performances these days are coming from outside the usual Vienna-Amsterdam-New York Philharmonic loop. Conductors, from Manhattan School of Music's Glen Cortese to Los Angeles' Esa-Pekka Salonen, are taking harder looks at these scores, eschewing the encroaching suaveness of our times and finding more musical incident than ever. Add to them Orchestra 2001's James Freeman, who broke from his usual programs of living composers in favor of Symphony No. 4 by long-dead Mahler Wednesday at the Trinity Center for Urban Life.

The Philadelphia Orchestra offers two diverse programs in the next few days, both musical signatures of inspired lives. Mahler often said that a symphony should encompass an entire world. His Ninth Symphony is a universe, filled with exaltation as well as bitterness, as his vast accomplishments would only be fully appreciated in the future. Christoph Eschenbach will be on the podium leading us through Mahler's moving, emotional journey of the soul (2 p.m. today and 8 p.m. tomorrow, Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Broad and Spruce streets, $10-$75, 215-893-1999)

Once the Philadelphia Orchestra players finished their preperformance leaflet excursion into the Thursday-night Kimmel Center audience to protest Saturday's looming bankruptcy vote, certain realities set in: These subscription concerts may be the last by the pre-Chapter 11 version of this ensemble. If so, at least they are led by longtime guest David Zinman, a model of solidity bound to leave sweet memories. Typical of Zinman programs, the feel-good second half (Mahler's Symphony No. 4 )

Michael Tilson Thomas has been keeping company with Mahler for five decades, first as a transfixed 13-year-old listener, and now as a leading interpreter of classical music's big thinker on death and the meaning of existence. Tilson Thomas brings his San Francisco Symphony to the Kimmel Center Tuesday in Mahler's first symphonic grappling with those big questions: Symphony No. 2, the "Resurrection. " Question: I think listeners might be interested in what you say to an orchestra about this piece as you start rehearsals.

A conductor's voice is at least as mysterious a quality in music as the distinctive sound that each player produces on his or her instrument. That voice - how the orchestra sounds under the conductor's direction - simply is; it rarely changes much through the length of a career and may be only slightly altered through rehearsal or performance indications. For Yoel Levi, the 37-year-old music director-designate of the Atlanta Symphony who conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra last night at the Academy of Music, that voice is a little dry, its clarity preserved at the expense of much expressive range.

A concert or a sports victory? The Philadelphia Orchestra performance on Friday felt like the latter at the close of the Mahler Symphony No. 1 , with each of the principal players being cheered like Olympic gold-medal winners, the biggest applause being reserved for music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Though Bach's St. Matthew Passion was his greatest artistic feat so far this season, this Mahler concert was perhaps Nézet-Séguin's biggest audience success - in a symphony that can more or less play itself, but is hardly fail-safe.

Above all else, she makes a beautiful sound. Some singers are willing to forgo sound quality to put emotion behind a text. But in her Friday-night recital for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society at the Perelman Theater, mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink swathed story after story in an unfailingly civilized tone. Argentinean with Slovenian roots, Fink has the twin virtues of richness and clarity. Often it was impossible to separate her polish from that of her pianist, Anthony Spiri. In the fourth in a set of Schumann songs on texts by Nikolaus Lenau, "The Herdsgirl," Fink's sound was nearly indistinguishable from Spiri's right hand, so neatly matched were they in pitch and color.

Many a demographic is super-served throughout the year on the Philadelphia film festival calendar. Cineastes with particular interests are catered to by the Latin American, Jewish, Terror, Gay & Lesbian, Science, Asian American and Animation film festivals, among others, not to mention the overarching Philadelphia Film Festival, which will take place in October this year. Add another group of movie buffs to the list: music fans. Starting this week, the inaugural XPN Music Film Festival will take place in University City, with 20 movies screening, mostly at the Annenberg Center on the University of Pennsylvania campus.

  Morris Goldman, 93, formerly of West Mount Airy, a cofounder of the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, died Saturday, Feb. 11, of respiratory failure at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. Former Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster described the society in a 1996 report as "one of the city's noncommercial treasures. " Mr. Goldman's son, Robert, said in an interview that his father "had an abiding love of classical music," though he had no formal training after high school.

As the 19th century hurried to a close, European composers seemed driven to fill its last years with song. Angelika Kirchschlager underlined that point in her recital Tuesday with pianist Warren Jones at the Perelman Theater. Almost their entire program was drawn from those closing years in songs by Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Mahler, and Reynaldo Hahn that showed both a cohesive tradition and energized prospects for change. Tracing such intangibles is not the strength of many singers, but with this mezzo-soprano each song seemed important in itself and also as a pylon marking some intricate shift in an imposing stylistic continuum.

Whether or not there's a free lunch in America, free Mahler is all over the place these days. Though the posthumous popularity of the early-20th-century symphonist Gustav Mahler seemed to be peaking 10 years ago, recognition of his music is, if anything, accelerating in this, the centenary of his death. Those who have never investigated Medici TV ( www.medici.tv ) are more likely to do so now that the online video-streaming network is offering a Mahler symphony cycle free to the end of June, showing the Orchestre de Paris under Christoph Eschenbach in thrilling form.

Quoting Gustav Mahler is not a wholesome activity for composers, if only because you can't give his music a cameo appearance and expect to move on. You want to hear the entire Mahler piece being quoted. The memory more than lingers. But quoting was inevitable at Wednesday's "Mahler100/Schoenberg60" concert by Mimi Stillman's Dolce Suono Ensemble in three of the five new works commissioned for the occasion. Most were songs, ostensibly, but with ambitions - and a sense of drama from the star soloist, bass Eric Owens, that often suggested operatic scenes for chamber ensemble and voice.

Once the Philadelphia Orchestra players finished their preperformance leaflet excursion into the Thursday-night Kimmel Center audience to protest Saturday's looming bankruptcy vote, certain realities set in: These subscription concerts may be the last by the pre-Chapter 11 version of this ensemble. If so, at least they are led by longtime guest David Zinman, a model of solidity bound to leave sweet memories. Typical of Zinman programs, the feel-good second half (Mahler's Symphony No. 4 )

The Philadelphia Orchestra's music-director-to-be walked out on stage Friday night with a microphone instead of a baton, drawing a partial standing ovation before his first beat. "Wait and see if you still like me after the concert," Yannick Nézet-Séguin said. It was a charming rejoinder, but there was really never any doubt. In his third program with the orchestra - and his first since being named music director beginning in 2012 - the 35-year-old Montrealer showed his new public what it might expect from the Nézet-Séguin era. He turned in assured, if not revelatory, interpretations of Haydn and Mahler.

OTTAWA - Since he's neither tall nor old, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin jokes that he sometimes feels like a kid trying to tame 100 lions onstage. On Wednesday at the National Arts Centre here, the Philadelphia Orchestra's new music director-designate had nearly 500 such musical beasts for Mahler's Symphony No. 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand") positioned in balconies, in boxes, and onstage, with an adoring audience that included Canada's governor-general (the surrogate for the queen of England)