Proms 2011 Prom 14: Mahler – Symphony No. 9

Sir Roger Norrington has chosen Mahler's last completed symphony for his final concerts as Principal Conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, a post he has held since 1998.

Written at a time of personal crisis, the Ninth begins with what some have heard as the irregular rhythm of Mahler's own failing heartbeat and it ends with a long fade to eternal nothingness. In between comes perhaps the greatest, certainly the most cathartic, of all late- Romantic symphonies. Sadly, the composer did not live to hear it.

Tonight's performance promises to be both a moving occasion and a revealing one, taking up the faster pacing and purer orchestral sonorities of the composer's own time.

There will be no interval