Closing Night: Mahler 7 by Mahler, Haydn, From (2017/2017), Conductor Thomas Dausgaard, City Halls, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Gustav Mahler once said that the symphony should be like the world – “it should embrace everything”. And in his huge Seventh Symphony, that’s exactly what it sounds like he’s trying to do. Every Mahler symphony is a great emotional journey; but this one sweeps from an overcast Alpine lake through lovesongs, nightmares and nocturnal marches to an ear-splitting finish hung with jangling cowbells and laced with pitch-black humour. In short: Mahler doesn’t get much more Mahlerian than this – just as Haydn’s quietly subversive 88th symphony sums up all its composer’s warmth and wit in a colourfully-painted nutshell. Thomas Dausgaard ends the season in a blaze of laughter and light.