MAHLER’S 3RD SYMPHONY

MASTERWORKS 8: MAHLER’S THIRD SYMPHONY

Friday, April 23 & Saturday, April 24, 2027

The grandeur of Mahler’s Third Symphony is immense enough to warrant a concert program all to itself. “A symphony must be like a world,” Gustav Mahler told fellow composer Jean Sibelius. “It should embrace everything.”

A huge, transcendent masterpiece that ponders the connection between nature and humankind, Mahler’s Third Symphony is a world that encompasses all. At the conclusion of the intense and emotional first movement, Mahler suggested a “long pause” in the score for everyone (onstage and off) to catch their breath. Listeners are destined to discover more breathtaking moments throughout the piece, though, especially as the women’s and children’s voices rise to the occasion in later movements.

Michael Francis returns to conduct the Charleston Symphony in the final Masterworks concert of the 2026-27 season.

PROGRAM

ARTISTS

Michael Francis, Conductor
Soloists To Be Announced
Charleston Symphony Women’s Chorus
Palmetto Choral Collective

NOTEWORTHY

• Michael Francis is the Music Director of the Florida Orchestra and the Mainly Mozart Festival, and he is Chief Conductor of the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz in Germany.
• In a letter to a friend, Mahler wrote of his Third Symphony: “Just imagine a work of such magnitude that it actually mirrors the whole world — one is, so to speak, only an instrument, played on by the universe … My symphony will be something the like of which the world has never yet heard! … In it, the whole of nature finds a voice.”