Some 40 years ago, Maurice Abravanel conducted the Utah Symphony in recordings of Gustav Mahler's symphonies that heightened the composer's fame in musical circles around the world -- and the orchestra's, too.

The Mahler magic has worked for current music director Keith Lockhart, as well. His cycle of Mahler performances is certain to be listed among the most significant achievements of his 11 years with the Utah Symphony.

Lockhart's Mahler cycle culminates this weekend with a pair of Abravanel Hall performances of Mahler's Symphony No. 9, the composer's last. The symphony usually is viewed as a titanic struggle with mortality and a benediction on Mahler's life. He died soon after completing it in 1911, at age 50, and never heard it performed.

Mahler's musical farewell finds resonance with a less-final, soon-to-come farewell. Lockhart steps down from his position with the Utah Symphony next month, weeks after completing his Mahler cycle.

Memories of conducting Mahler concerts loom large as he looks back on his years with the orchestra -- none more so than those connected to Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand," which he and the Utah Symphony performed with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. "Doing the Eighth Symphony in the Tabernacle on the Tanner Gift of Music Series has to be one of the all-time great musical experiences of my life," Lockhart said. "It was a wonderful performance that came together beautifully. It was an experience I know I'll never forget."

He expects to feel deep satisfaction from completing the Mahler cycle. "Any conductor who gets to do that cycle once in their life is very lucky and has been wonderfully blessed," Lockhart said. "I feel very lucky to have done this, and I look forward to going back to them over time. They are such large mountains that you can become so busy getting to the top, that you don't get to look around. I look forward to looking around."

Symphony No. 9 is a gigantic 85-minute work in which Mahler pits life against death. Written in the early 20th century, as Arnold Schoenberg and others experimented with atonality, the symphony also contrasts tonality with abstraction.

Hearing it performed is not what listeners would consider a Barcalounger experience. "You have to be prepared to go on a journey -- for someone to take you and leave you changed at the end," Lockhart said. "If you could say one thing about Mahler, it's that he was unlike anyone else in his ability to do that."

Craig Fineshriber, the Utah Symphony's principal percussionist, concurs. Calling himself a "Mahler nut," Fineshriber says he is entranced by the range of feeling conveyed in Mahler's music.

"Every conceivable emotion and passion that occurs in a human being is somewhere in all that music," Fineshriber said. "It's so human. It portrays what it is to be human -- the highs, lows, joys, sorrow and miseries. They're all in there somewhere."

Mahler's symphonies keep percussionists busy playing interesting parts, a bonus for audience members who enjoy watching the action. The Ninth Symphony calls for three large bells that toll ominously. To achieve the correct sound, the Utah Symphony rented "some super-large chimes," Fineshriber said. He'll be standing on a ladder or chair to strike the 8-foot metal tubes.

Fineshriber appreciates Lockhart's choice to program the nine Mahler symphonies, plus the composer's symphonic song cycle "Das Lied von der Erde," over the past decade. "I'm very grateful he chose to do the whole cycle. I knew that every year I could count on a Mahler symphony, and that's been wonderful," Fineshriber said. "It has been quite a ride for audiences over the last 10 years to hear quality Mahler performances, too."

Although Symphony No. 9 reflects Mahler's attempts to reconcile himself to approaching death, and although it contains moments of tragedy, hope never disappears. "Mahler's concept of the world, even at the door of death, was a very, very beautiful concept," Lockhart said. "He was fiercely in love with life. Even viewing the end of it, there is a recounting of what made it so important to him to be alive."

Just as lives must end, so must symphonies. Mahler -- who wrote some of the loudest passages of classical music ever penned -- ends his final one quietly.

"At the very end of the symphony, it's so wonderful because it fades away," Fineshriber said. "It goes from huge orchestration down to smaller and smaller, and quieter and quieter -- almost as if it's the last breath."