As the Kapellmeister, what would you do? Members of the orchestra you lead yearn to go home and yet their employer remains oblivious to their desire to leave. Haydn picked a humorous method to give the employer a hint in his Farewell Symphony and received a happy ending. In a completely different way of saying “farewell”, Mahler released his unfeigned anguish through howling music, and turned his pain into an eternal monument. After his spiritual adventures of the experimental Symphony No.7, freedom-seeking Symphony No.8, and Das Lied von der Erde, Mahler returned to the traditional orchestra-only, four-movement form in Symphony No.9 and built it from a groundbreaking setup and profound insights. Balanced on the knife’s edge between heaven and hell, the magic of Mahler’s Symphony No.9 is his ability to balance light and darkness, negotiating their co-existence. Love and death become two faces of the same coin. The one who interprets this symphony can either present the universe of Mahler as it or uniquely reinterpret it. At the end of Shao-Chia Lü's tenture as the Music Director of the NSO, he brings to the audience this masterpiece once more, paired with the witty Farewell Symphony of Haydn, wisely saying “Auf Wiedersehen. ”No matter how many times you’ve heard Mahler’s Ninth, this performance will be a keepsake to treasure forever.