Jonathan Nott conducts Mahler’s Third

Hidden messages course through this programme. At one stage, the movements of Mahler’s Third Symphony were given titles: ‘What the animals of the forest tell me’, ‘What the night tells me’, ‘What the morning bells tell me’, ‘What love tells me’, ‘What the child tells me’, among others. But the composer deleted these epigraphs, not wishing to be mistaken for a musical pictorialist. Writing to his wife Alma, he described hearing the Third, clearly a startling experience even for him: ‘Dearest! As soon as my Third started, I completely lost my sight and hearing. It fairly takes your breath away.’ Henri Dutilleux’s Correspondances draws on letters exchanged between famous figures in the arts, but it was also inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s ideal of mixing the senses, and takes its title from one of his poems. Dutilleux –the 100th anniversary of whose birth we celebrate this year – loved Baudelaire and was also fascinated by Mahler. One can hear traces of the latter’s approach to orchestration in Correspondances, whose movements each shine a spotlight on different sections of the orchestra.