Ranging across metaphysics, comedy, grief and love, Mahler’s songs for voice and piano are works of exquisite delicacy that offer fascinating glimpses into his grand symphonic works, writes pianist Julius Drake
No orchestral season today is complete without a Mahler symphony. Three of them featured at last year’s BBC Proms, this year there’ll be four. Over a recent weekend in London, you could hear the first with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican on a Friday and the following evening enjoy the epic glories of the eighth with the London Philharmonic at the Royal Festival Hall. Conductors from Boulez to Bernstein and Chailly to Rattle all have Mahler symphony cycles in their recorded catalogues.
And this month the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam hosts a grand Mahler festival. Across 10 days all his symphonies will be performed by world-famous orchestras and conductors, his unfinished 10th among them and also his “vocal symphony”, Das Lied von der Erde. “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything,” the composer famously said.
But what of Mahler the miniaturist, the master of that most intimate and personal musical form, the song for voice and piano?
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