Sakari Oramo conducts “Das Lied von der Erde” at the Mahler Festival Amsterdam

Unlike many music festivals, the Mahler Festival Amsterdam is not an annual occurrence: while Willem Mengelberg’s aim was to create “a second musical home” in the Netherlands for the composer and his works, following its premiere in 1920, the festival was not held again until 1995, 75 years later. The festival was actually due to take place for the third time in 2020 – marking the 100th anniversary of its founding – but the pandemic led to its postponement until 2025. The reason why the festival does not take place more often becomes clear when one considers its enormous scale and the effort involved: over ten days, renowned orchestras and soloists from all over the world perform all of Mahler’s symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde.

The Berliner Philharmoniker presented Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with chief conductor Kirill Petrenko in the penultimate concert of the 2025 festival, but it was up to Sakari Oramo to complete the cycle: the Finnish conductor, who has had ties with the orchestra for twenty years, stepped in for an indisposed Daniel Barenboim, who was originally to conduct the Tenth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde in Berlin and Amsterdam.

By 1910, Mahler managed to fully complete only the first movement of his final symphony. Yet in this Adagio, lasting just under half an hour, we can almost hear the emotional undercurrent of his personal crisis: the grief over the loss of his daughter, the anxiety about his own death in the face of a diagnosed heart defect and – most acutely – the deep pain that overwhelmed him when he learnt of his wife Alma’s affair with Walter Gropius. A devastating, dissonant cry forms the climax of the Adagio – Mahler had intended to give another movement the telling title Purgatorio. The symphony-like Lied von der Erde, composed two years earlier, strikes a more conciliatory note. Although it deals with the transience of human existence, it ultimately offers a comforting prospect in the “earthly eternity” of nature, which Mahler loved so dearly.

Preview

Berliner Philharmoniker

Sakari Oramo

Dorottya Láng

Benjamin Bruns