Tugan Sokhiev conducts Mahler’s First
Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 already demonstrates all the hallmarks of the composer’s style: the emotional outbursts, abruptly opening chasms, folk melodies, sounds of nature, and grotesque alienation. Tugan Sokhiev presents this work alongside Lili Boulanger’s Impressionistic, shimmering D’un matin de printemps and the newly composed viola concerto by Mahler enthusiast Donghoon Shin. The soloist is Amihai Grosz, first principal viola with the Philharmoniker.
Lili Boulanger was one of the greatest compositional talents in France at the beginning of the 20th century: at the age of 19, she was the first woman ever to win the coveted Prix de Rome at the Conservatoire de Paris. She died just a few years later. In her orchestral piece D'un matin de printemps, the younger sister of Nadia Boulanger, the greatest music teacher of all time, gave expression to the joy of nature’s reawakening – in bright colours, captivating rhythms and with a sophisticated, impressionistic sound palette.
After this far too rarely performed work, the programme includes the premiere of a work by composer Donghoon Shin, born in Seoul in 1983. The title of the viola concerto Threadsuns, performed by Amihai Grosz, comes from a poem by Paul Celan. Shin was awarded the Claudio Abbado Composition Prize in 2022 and was already commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation to write the Cello Concerto Nachtergebung.
The main work of the evening is Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony, the beginning of which the composer described as the “awakening of nature in the earliest morning”. In fact, the music offers an atmospheric soundscape complete with sunrise and bird song, with Mahler choosing the title “Spring and no end!” for this highly poetic opening in the autograph manuscript. The rustic scherzo is followed by the third movement, which is to be played “with parody” in a “sometimes ironic and happy and sometimes eerie and brooding mood” as Mahler called for. In the finale, the symphony ultimately builds to a great choral apotheosis.
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