Freudian trip: how psychoanalysis and skydiving are helping Aurora orchestra open up Mahler’s First

When Mahler premiered his first symphony, it left audiences baffled. For their latest Prom, Aurora are bringing it to life – with the help of Sigmund Freud In 2014, Aurora Orchestra did something that had never been done at the Proms before. We played Mozart’s 40th symphony – that has been done, many times – but from memory. It was terrifying. Orchestral musicians usually start getting out their instruments 10 minutes before they go on stage, but people started warming up nearly an hour before – endless repetitions of fragments of music as players tested what they thought they might forget. We didn’t know if we would get on stage and freeze or fall off. Thankfully, we did neither and fear turned into excitement. Our bassoonist Amy Harman described the feeling as “like skydiving without a parachute. But in a good way.” Even so, if someone had told me then that 12 years later we would be performing from memory Mahler’s First Symphony – a piece almost twice as long as the Mozart that uses more than double the number of musicians – I would have been surprised. And if I’d then been told that in the first half of the concert we’d be presenting a new play about M