This cat listening to Mahler is basically all of us

9 August 2019, 17:41 | Updated: 9 August 2019, 17:46

The full emotional range of Mahler’s Symphony No 9… perfectly emulated by the interpretive movements of a cat.

All Mahler superfans will know that one of his Adagios can elicit a huge range of emotions.

But we're happy to say there's no need for a detailed analysis of the rates of harmonic change and cadential tension (though we have that too), because this feline sums it all up perfectly.

Choco belongs to Japanese pianist Yuriko Morota. The cat's dramatic contortions to the slow, suspense-filled strings in the Adagio finale to Mahler's final symphony are everything you could wish for. If indeed you wish for pets listening to Austro-Bohemian late-Romantic symphonies, and looking funny.

Choco's response to the symphony went viral in May 2018. It has been viewed over two million times, and has even inspired some striking fan art:

Mahler's final symphony was written between 1908 and 1909, at a time when the composer was confronting his ill-health and mortality.

Its final movement is often described as his 'farewell to the world' with a short, yearning motif repeated over and over, before being consumed by silence at the very end. Here's that incredible moment: