Hugh Wolff returns to Belgian National Orchestra

December 5, 2017

Hugh Wolff returns as Music Director of the Belgian National Orchestra on 8 December 2017, to lead the orchestra in a performance of Mahler’s last complete Symphony, Symphony No 9.

The score has always attracted discussion on how it should be understood and interpreted- whether it stands for a whole suite of deaths or if it is ultimately a ‘love-song’  to life and mortality.

Hugh Wolff shares his own insights with us “From a man who had lost an infant daughter to illness two years earlier and had just been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart defect, the symphony’s epic struggle to accept the inevitability of death is profoundly moving.  No symphony had ever crossed that threshold quite so bravely: the final page of ineffably soft fragmented melody so transcendent and calm.  It’s a privilege to perform it.”