Rhode Island Philharmonic conductor Larry Rachleff and his wife, soprano Susan Lorette Dunn, team up for Mahler’s Fourth Symphony tonight and Saturday night at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. The Brown University Orchestra tackles Mahler’s Sixth tomorrow and Sunday.

Mahler fans are in luck this weekend. Performances of two of the composer’s more popular symphonies are scheduled.

The Rhode Island Philharmonic plays the enchanting Fourth Saturday night at 8 at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, while the Brown University Orchestra tackles the monumental Sixth tomorrow night and Sunday afternoon at Sayles Hall.

The dark, brooding Sixth, known as The Tragic, is considered by many to be the greatest of the composer’s nine symphonies. It is certainly one of his most impassioned, with its famed hammer blows in the half-hour finale.

For the occasion, a member of the orchestra’s percussion section made a 5-foot wooden mallet to create the dull thud Mahler called for. It will be struck against a wooden platform that conductor Paul Phillips hopes will be raised high enough so audience members won’t miss the dramatic moment.

Mahler was a suspicious soul, to be sure, and he omitted one of the three hammer blows, which represent fate, from his own performances. He was afraid a third strike might signal his doom. And perhaps he was right.

For soon after the composition of the Sixth, his luck changed for the worse. His young daughter died, and he lost his job at the Vienna Opera. He was then diagnosed with the fatal heart condition that would kill him at age 51.

Phillips said he is toying with the order of the movements, much as Mahler did. He was still undecided early this week as to whether to play the lovely Andante, with its jangling cowbells, second or third.

Phillips said the 85-minute Sixth is by far the most ambitious piece the orchestra has undertaken during his tenure. The performance calls for 105 players, including eight horns, six trumpets and two harps. He has only had to import four players for the event. The orchestra, he said, has never sounded better.

The student players, he said, have “risen to the occasion.”

Phillips had programmed Mahler Five last year, but was unable to get to it. So he promised the orchestra that he would do a Mahler score before this year was out.

“Musically, it’s as powerful as it gets,” said Phillips. “I come home and collapse after every rehearsal.”

The Brown Orchestra performs Mahler’s Sixth Symphony tomorrow night at 8 and Sunday afternoon at 2 in Sayles Hall on the campus green. Tickets are $4, $2 for seniors and those with a Brown ID.

Meanwhile, Rhode Island Philharmonic conductor Larry Rachleff will be teaming up with his soprano wife, Susan Lorette Dunn, for Saturday’s account of the Mahler Fourth, one of the composer’s leaner, more classically proportioned symphonies. The concert also features Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms with the Providence Singers.

Or you can catch just the Fourth tonight at 6:30 at Veterans Memorial Auditorium at one of the orchestra’s informal Rush Hour programs.

Tickets for that performance range from $22 to $42. Admission to Saturday’s full program at Veterans Memorial Auditorium are $27 to $65. Call (401) 248-7000, or log on to www.riphil.org, or www.arttixri.com., or www.tickets.com.

cgray@projo.com