If Pierre Boulez's Mahler series has had its highs and lows, to what extent are these more properly attributable to the strengths and weaknesses of the disparate orchestras employed? The Clevelanders, ...

Springfield Symphony Orchestra concerts devoted to one piece are rare. Conductor and music director Peter Stafford Wilson didn’t hesitate to schedule one this season with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.

Give Mahler a cheery nursery-rhyme ditty and he’ll turn it into the bleakest of gallows marches. Don’t believe us? Have a listen to the opening of the third movement of the First Symphony.

Some months before beginning his six-week Mahler Project in 2012, a 30-year-old Gustavo Dudamel said he was studying like crazy. Just before the first concert on Jan. 13 that year, he said, “It ...