Summary: Podcast host Mark Travis provides a guide to the two works on the program of January 5, 7 & 10: Thomas Adès’s Polaris — a New York Philharmonic co-commission receiving its New York Premiere with these performances — and Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. Music Director Alan Gilbert talks about the music of Thomas Adès — whom he describes as "a composer who has absolute control over what he puts on the page and how it translates into actual sound in the concert hall" — and Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which he has termed the "quintessential Mahler symphony."
