A concert of farewells – to life, to love and times gone by. Richard Strauss’s waltzing nostalgia is matched to Mahler’s elegy for voices and orchestra. Unbearably sad, unbelievably beautiful.
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Where will the music take your emotions? It doesn’t matter when it sounds as magnificent as this. Mozart’s sparkling overture to The Marriage of Figaro barely hints at the catharsis of the opera’s conclusion. But after that it’s a concert of farewells – to life, to love and times gone by. Richard Strauss’s music for Der Rosenkavalier embodies a spirit of waltzing nostalgia and its opulent beauty is distilled in this orchestral suite.
Mahler’s Song of the Earth is an elegy for voices and orchestra, the work of a man obsessed with his own mortality. Its imagery places a spiritual stamp on the physical world – wine, love, the moon and the turning of the seasons – and ends with the farewell that is forever. The music is unbearably sad and tinged with longing, but this is Mahler and never has the urge to cry felt so satisfying.
MOZART
The Marriage of Figaro: Overture
R STRAUSS Der Rosenkavalier: Suite
MAHLER The Song of the Earth
Vladimir Ashkenazy conductor
Lilli Paasikivi mezzo-soprano
Stuart Skelton tenor
PRE-CONCERT TALKS
Free pre-concert talk by Genevieve Lang at 7.15pm in the Northern Foyer.
AUDIO PLAYER LISTING
Track 1 – MOZART The Marriage of Figaro: Overture
Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta
DECCA 476 9907
Track 2 – R STRAUSS Der Rosenkavalier: introduction to the concert suite
Vienna Philharmonic conducted by André Previn
DEUTSCHE GRAMMPHON 437 790-2
Track 3 – MAHLER The Song of the Earth: Das Trinklied von Jammer das Erde (The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow)
Track 4 – MAHLER The Song of the Earth: Der Abschied (The Farewell)
Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano, and James King, tenor, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink
PHILIPS 468 182-2
Audio kindly supplied by Universal Music.
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Strauss
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