Mahler's Ninth Symphony should not be performed in public. You may have better luck; I never heard a live performance of the Ninth without audience noise ruining the finale. It's simply impossible to filter out the coughs and the multiplicity of sound around you as the Adagio (after 90 minutes of preparation for this moment) dissolves into silence. More than just irritation, the *loss* has never been more intensely felt as this afternoon, at a very special concert in Davies Hall. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted a matinee performance of the Ninth, the first in a series of four concerts on the 26th anniversary of his first appearance with the San Francisco Symphony. To make the occasion even more poignant, the debut in January, 1974, for the then 29-year-old was also with the Mahler Ninth. And yet, none of that matters in comparison with the here-and-now of inspired, in large part magnificent work today by MTT and a fired-up orchestra taking infinite care with the concluding pianissimi of the Adagio to coughs, fidgeting, and one enormous sneeze about 10 bars from the end. What may work for Kodaly's "Hary" doesn't for Mahler's pppp. One tries to get over unfortunate happenings like this, but it's very hard today when everything was moving in the right direction. "Audience participation" was worse than an anticlimax; it was throwing away an enormous, towering buildup. Although not quite on par with MTT's "perfect" Mahler Fifth a couple of years ago, this was a remarkable performance. From the opening bars -- hesitating, heavy, but clearly articulated, "speaking" from the heart -- the Andante was all of one piece. The tempo was exactly right, neither ponderous nor insecurely rushing, and the music quickly built to a violent climax, then calming in volume but not in intensity. First violins, woodwinds, the brass, concertmaster Mark Volkert, principal violist Geraldine Walther especially, cellists Michael Grebanier and Peter Wyrick, timpanist David Herbert have all done some of their best work in memory. The rakish, roguish quality of the Laendler, the rough vitality of the Rondo came through clearly and well, with only a slight (perhaps inevitable) slackening of intensity, but the Adagio built a bridge back to the beginning. MTT shaped the music throughout with an appealing combination of control and encouragement for individual "breathing" by the instruments. He also succeeds where the otherwise superb Helmuth Rilling fails in playing Mahler: MTT allows free expression of the fear and rage in the ugly, spastic, "out-of-control" portions of the music. The work was moving to its inevitable, magnificent conclusion when... Janos Gereben/SF [log in to unmask]