Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9 in D major is a monumental work, not just in its 90-minute length, but in the emotional territory it traverses. The Minnesota Orchestra's performance Thursday night gave only an approximate representation of the work's shattering power. Some exquisite orchestral playing could not overcome conductor Mark Wigglesworth's dry and overly intellectual interpretation.

An aura of death hangs over this symphony. When Mahler composed it, he knew he was dying. He had a debilitating heart condition but refused to curtail his active creative life, not only composing, but also conducting the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. The four movements journey from anguish to peace with stops at joy and bitterness.

Little of that survived in this performance. In the complex first movement, Wigglesworth lost his sense of its architecture. Where military marches jostle with chamber music, effect followed effect without a coherent arc. It lacked the suffering that Mahler had poured into it.

In the second movement, he unnecessarily played up the music's disjointedness. Mahler indicated that the ländler should be "somewhat clumsy and rather rough," but the experience of a peasant dance was lost altogether, as was the sense of tragedy impinging on earthly joy.

Conversely, Wigglesworth softened the almost Shostakovich-like grotesqueries of the third movement, muting its sense of sardonic bitterness. But he did build it to an impressively violent climax.

In the final movement, he redeemed himself. Aided by some blissful playing by the strings, he evoked a calm acceptance at the inevitability of death. In the final pages, as the music dies away, he created a true sense of ethereal transcendence.

That should have been enough. When Minnesota Orchestra has programmed this work in the past, they allowed it to stand on its own. But now they programmed a short first half, Franz Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony in B minor, D. 759. The evening is even being billed as "Schubert's 'Unfinished' Symphony," which may amount to false advertising, given the number of people who walked out during the Mahler.

That said, this was a strong performance. The oboe and clarinet, in particular, presented themselves nicely. In the first movement, Wigglesworth created a real sense of drama, intensifying each repetition of the theme. And in the second, he established the sense of yearning and melancholy, resolving into serenity.

The symphony was certainly in sync with the mood of the evening. But by the end of the Mahler, it all felt like too much.

William Randall Beard is a Minneapolis writer.