Simon Halsey on Mahler, Bach, Stravinsky (16 min.)

It was not Gustav Mahler’s destiny to become a composer of opera. But listening to his early work Das klagende Lied gives us an idea of just how a stage work from Mahler’s pen might have sounded – a fairy-tale of enormous dimensions, which has been performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Vladimir Jurowski in May 2011. In an introduction to the concert, chorus master Simon Halsey presents the works performed this evening.