Very few composers are able to give to their music such humanity and emotional content that it can completely transform their listeners' perspectives about the importance and the meaning of such things as life and death or love. This is not something any school could teach one or any book could help one with, for the essence of music and art resides in the heart and soul of human beings and is their reflection. Any kind of artwork is very often the concrete projection of the artist's own emotions, feelings and perceptions of the outer world, which is what makes any piece of art unique. The Ninth Symphony of Gustav Mahler is one of those masterpieces that combines both amazing craftsmanship and emotional content. Composed in 1908-09 in the last years of his life, it is the last work he completed and in many ways, his musical testament. In this symphony Mahler bids farewell to life in the most beautiful and sensitive way. But he also expresses strongly his fear about the fatality of death. Leonard Bernstein, who had a very close affinity to Mahler's personality and music, conducts the Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in a magnificent and soulful interpretation of the symphony. The work is divided in four movements as always in the German and Austrian symphonic tradition. Each of this movements is meant to be a farewell to specifics aspects of life. The first to tenderness and human passion, the second and the third to simple and urban pleasures and the fourth one to life itself. Throughout the all symphony Mahler dramatically oscillates between optimism, hope and darker statements, and refuses to let go of life and hope, as if he was negotiating through his music with death itself, for the right to stay alive. The first movement starts with a premonition of death in the form of an irregular rhythm played by the low strings and the french horns. When he started composing this symphony, Mahler was aware and very concerned about the heart condition he had. The