Programme Guide

Mahler was only in his mid-twenties when he wrote his First Symphony, which makes the masterful way in which he employs such vast orchestral forces all the more surprising. The second work of this evening’s concert contrasts this expression of freshness and new departures: the Symphonic Dances by Sergei Rachmaninoff: the composer’s final work, in which he – while in exile in America – invokes the musical language of his Russian homeland.