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The three friends try to find their rhythm in the steps of the danse macabre she creates, even as old dance patterns of desire and friendship bring them closer to the encroaching flames.

They were a requiem for all of the failed promises of both communism and capitalism, a danse macabre on the grave of the 20th century.

The grim lyricism of Adès’s love songs and lullabies returns with another Berceuse, followed by the finale, “Waltzes,” a rhapsodic assemblage that evolves into a relentless danse macabre analogue to the opera itself.

This was deliberate, spaciously paced Mahler, lilting but never too sweet in its ländler second movement, its third-movement danse macabre as haunting as ever.

The Philharmonic played well, with an almost choked grotesquerie in the march in the first movement, an eerie danse macabre of the second and bristling unsentimentality in the third.