The thousand at Tempelhof

This extraordinary work is often called the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’, because Mahler’s vision called for such a huge ensemble: two mixed choirs, a boys’ choir, eight soloists, a massive orchestra, an organ, and an additional brass section.


‘Veni, creator, spiritus!’ It is with this Pentecost hymn invoking the Holy Spirit that the symphony’s first movement begins. For the second movement, Mahler draws upon the final scene of Goethe’s Faust II : ‘The noble part of the spirit has been saved from evil’. Angels and other celestial ‘flight attendants’ lift Faust’s soul—rescued from the clutches of the devil—up to the realm of the ‘Eternal Feminine’.


Faust, an early pioneer of grand visions and soaring ideas, fits perfectly into the industrial architecture of Tempelhof. It is here that Mahler’s Eighth Symphony will truly ‘sound and resonate’ as never before, especially with Music Director James Gaffigan himself in the cockpit, guiding our flight through Mahler’s universe.