The Ninth Symphony is the last of Gustav Mahler's 'official' symphonies, and has long been regarded as his “swan song.” Following the completion of the huge Eighth Symphony, the 'Symphony of a Thousand' Mahler was informed by his doctor about an incurable heart ailment and soon after he died, only 50 years old, never having heard his Ninth Symphony. In this symphony Mahler wrestles with his own mortality and plunges into the dark night of the soul. The resulting music accounts for some of the most passionate and confessional pages ever composed.

On a purely musical basis, the Ninth straddles the boundary between late Romanticism and early modernism – as is manifested in the dissolution of tonality. Roger Norrington and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra have entered into this emotionally conflicted sound-world without sentimentality. As is now well know, Norrington's experience in dealing with historical performance practice, has led him to develop a modern orchestra with a historically informed style of performance, whose main characteristic is the for the strings to play without vibrato – a performance style now known as the 'Stuttgart Sound'. As can be heard in Norrington’s previous Mahler recordings, this interpretative decision can yield some profound musical results – from the transcendentally pure to the harrowing. No doubt, Norrington’s Ninth will become one of the most talked-about recordings of 2010!