Even for an elite orchestra, playing Mahler’s Third Symphony can be daunting. Lasting about 110 minutes, it is an audacious, sprawling, intensely demanding six-movement composition, which makes it not just the longest of Mahler’s symphonies, but also among the longest works in the symphonic canon, period. It’s also an expensive proposition to bring to any stage: Along with a large orchestra, the symphony requires both a women’s and boys’ chorus and an alto solo vocalist.
Mahler himself pronounced the symphony “the maddest thing I ever wrote.” And it’s still a relative rarity to hear live, though it has become something of a regular recently at Carnegie Hall, where it was performed in 2024 (by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra), in 2025 (David Robertson conducting the Juilliard Orchestra) and, on Saturday, by Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra.
The first movement — which lasted a solid 40 minutes on Saturday, longer than many complete symphonies — is a murky, atavistic thing that swells with melodic and rhythmic ideas that briefly surface from the primordial mass, only to shrink back time and again. After that, there are still five movements to go, gradually climbing from the wild, untameable natural world into a spiritual realm of heavenly bliss in the achingly radiant, slow final movement.
The concert on Saturday was the second of two programs by Fischer and the Budapest players, who were making their first appearance in New York in six years. (The first concert featured Arvo Pärt’s “Summa,” Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the soloist Maxim Vengerov and Brahms’s Second Symphony.)
Fischer and the orchestra, which he founded in 1983, were exemplary companions and guides through Mahler’s strange and sometimes confounding landscape; motifs emerged from the enormous ensemble with as much clarity as you might hear in intimate chamber music.
Some conductors luxuriate in the plush textures of Mahler; instead, Fischer created moments of great tension and release with a delicate touch, trusting the musicians and the audience to be attentive to even the slightest shifts in light, texture and mood.
Standout performances abounded, including the trombonist Balazs Szakszon, whose first-movement solo was both dazzling and unabashedly vulnerable; the concertmaster Daniel Bard, who balanced rhythmic play with silky-smooth tone; and Bence Horvath, playing a clarion-clear offstage post horn solo in the third movement.
Gerhild Romberger, a warm bronze-voiced mezzo-soprano, dug deep into her solos, particularly in the plaintive fourth movement, “O Mensch! Gib Acht!” The two choirs — the trebles of the Westminster Symphonic Choir (directed by Donald Nally) and the mixed-gender Young People’s Chorus of New York City (directed by Elizabeth Núñez) singing the boys’ chorus part — were excellent matches for the orchestra, offering lithe and piquant performances.
In this symphony, though, the orchestra is the real star. Fischer and the ensemble were endurance athletes, if ones whose grace, panache and emotional commitment made each moment of the long journey enthralling.
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Performed on Saturday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan.
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