As principal timpanist of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, now embarking on his final Hamburg season, Stephan Cürlis gets tons of love. This opening-night concert promises to be the one his fans will replay in their inner ear forever. He starts not in his usual corner up on a riser but at the knee of Maestro Alan Gilbert, embedded among seven kettledrums for James Oliverio’s Legacy Ascendant: Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra No. 3 (2022). The backup here consists of just strings plus a harp, with which the soloist shares a most-unorthodox duet; Oliverio’s fascination with kettledrums, we’re told, has more to do with seldom unleashed melodic and timbral potential than with boom boom boom. But the pièce de resistance, as is now customary for this orchestra at the start of a new season, is Mahler. It’s his epic Symphony No. 6 that’s on tap, unofficially known as “The Tragic.” Darksome and sprawling, it lacks the singing voices that often personalize the Master’s symphonies. But it is personal, building to a terminal pair of blows of Fate (sometimes three, depending on the edition). Those blows are struck by a mallet of Bunyanesque proportions—a uniquely shattering concert-hall coup de théâtre. Cürlis’s cheering section will go crazy. —Matthew Gurewitsch