Audio
Listen to Beethoven, Franck and Mahler
Tue, Mar 3, 2026
Bring the Concertgebouw Orchestra into your home! Now you can hear four live recordings by our orchestra on Apple Music, Spotify and all other streaming services: Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Franck's Symphony in D Minor and two symphonies by Mahler – the Fifth, and the profound Ninth with all its contrasts. Experience in your own living room how each performance opens a world of its own, from Beethoven's wandering to Mahler's existential yearning.
Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony
Everyone to the countryside with Daniel Harding
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony is an inner journey brilliantly disguised as a walking trip through the countryside depicted in music, aptly nicknamed the ‘Pastoral’. In its five movements, you can hear scenes like a tranquil landscape, a lively brook, a thunderstorm, and a shepherd’s song. Beethoven even specifies the birds he puts in his score: quail, cuckoo and nightingale. Everyone, come out to the countryside! Daniel Harding is your guide.
Franck's Symphony in D Minor
Dark beginning, radiant finale with Mariss Jansons
César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor is a richly expressive work. The press praised Mariss Jansons, who had just begun as chief conductor, for this ‘especially attractive’ performance, his no-frills approach allowing the composition’s mysticism, lyricism and heroics to shine through.
Mahler's Ninth Symphony
A memorable Mahler with Myung-whun Chung
While most orchestral RCO Live recordings are made at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, this one was made in the splendid acoustics of the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, on 11 February 2020, during a tour with Myung-Whun Chung. Although Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony is generally regarded as his farewell to love and life, this performance added a transcendence rarely experienced in this work. Mahler is deeply embedded in the musical tradition of the orchestra, which has performed the symphony countless times, but this performance – right before the Covid lockdown – was one of the most memorable.
Mahler's Fifth Symphony
A musical declaration of love with Fabio Luisi
The Concertgebouw Orchestra has performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 many times, the first of them under the baton of the composer himself. Mahler had close ties with Willem Mengelberg, the orchestra’s then chief conductor. The score used for the 1906 performance contains all sorts of comments and instructions. Mahler assigned to the Adagietto (literally ‘a bit slow’) the indication ‘sehr langsam’ or ‘very slow’, which some conductors would subsequently take to extremes. It featured in Visconti’s famous film Death in Venice, where it took on a tragic, yearning quality which Mahler could never have intended: Mengelberg was supposedly told by Mahler’s wife Alma that the Adagietto was a declaration of his love to her.
