ConcertPulse
Philharmonic Chamber Music Recital
Elbphilharmonie, Kleiner Saal (Hamburg)
Gustav Mahler’s development and work as a composer focussed mainly on two musical genres: symphony and Lied (song). Again and again, the two very different forms approached each other, but the combination of the monumentality of the symphony and the intimacy of the song reached a hymn-like climax in »Das Lied von der Erde«. A compositional legacy based on texts by Hans Bethge that Mahler left to the world, knowing full well that his own death was already waiting for him at the next corner. Arnold Schönberg arranged Mahler’s final song for a chamber orchestra for the concerts of the »Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen«, a work that was finally completed by Rainer Riehn. The arrangement for chamber orchestra turned Mahler’s composition into a masterpiece of its own kind, in which the essence of the original sound is preserved through careful reduction and transformed into a new quality of characterisation and emotional experience.