5th Symphony Concert - schedule, program & buy tickets

Daniele Gatti Conductor
Marie-Nicole Lemieux Alto
Klaus Florian Vogt Tenor

A work between a symphony and a song cycle: with the "Lied von der Erde", Gustav Mahler deliberately sought a new path after the Eighth. Fearing the "curse of the Ninth", he simply called his next work a song and yet created a monumental "symphony for tenor and alto voice and orchestra". Here, the human voice becomes part of the orchestral texture, with existential questions of farewell and transience running through the work. The Dresden premiere took place in 1916 under Fritz Reiner, and the press praised Mahler's masterful orchestration. The opening piece is the 2003 instrumental work "Lied" by Jörg Widmann, the Staatskapelle's current Capell-Compositeur.

Gustav Mahler:
"Das Lied von der Erde"

"'Das Lied von der Erde' is neither just a song cycle nor just a symphony - and yet far more than both at the same time! You have to imagine Gustav Mahler in the face of his deepest personal and at the same time worst professional crisis, sitting in a wooden hut in Toblach in the forest, his 'composer's cottage', and studying Chinese poetry. There, on the basis of these poems, he created a work that explores all aspects of human existence down to the smallest detail: Youth, beauty, spring, nature, fall, misery, intoxication. And at the end: farewell. Farewell to the world."

Julius Rönnebeck
2nd horn player

Subject to change without notice.