Principal Viola of the New York Philharmonic,

and I'm here to speak a little bit about Mahler's Tenth Symphony,

his final composition.

Mahler was not in good health when he started this last work of his.

He had heart failure,

he was afraid his wife was having an affair,

he, mentally, was just in a very anguished place.

And this first movement,

which is a movement that he did complete,

starts with a viola section solo.

Very bleak,

sort of recitative-like,

and it goes like this.

This tune comes back several times during the first movement.

I'll play you another example where it's similar melodic material,

but there's sort of an anguished cry in the middle of it,

before it simmers back down into the texture of the orchestra.

We're very lucky to have this version of Mahler's Tenth today.

It was put together in the late 1950s

by a British Late Romantic authority

named Deryck Cooke.

And he, along with Alma Mahler,

Mahler's widow,

worked together very closely to flesh out the bare-bones draft

that Mahler had left.

And the Deryck Cooke version is what we play today.

It's a beautiful piece.

We hope you enjoy it and we miss you. We'll be back. Thanks so much.