Event listing: Philharmonia Orchestra | Anvil, Basingstoke | Thu 21 Apr 2011 at 19:45

This listing is in the past

Anvil, Basingstoke Basingstoke, South-East, RG21 7QR, United Kingdom

Dates/times in London time zone

Programme

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791)	Serenade in C minor for wind, K388 (K384a)
Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911)	Symphony no. 6 in A minor "Tragic"

Performers

Philharmonia Orchestra
Lorin Maazel	Conductor

Mozart's wind serenades range from genial entertainments to serious masterpieces, and this C minor work is one of the very best. Mahler's Sixth Symphony was composed between 1903 and 1905. This was outwardly the happiest period of the composer's life, but the symphony turned out to be an epic and disturbing work, about which Mahler later developed a superstitious fear. It begins with a frighteningly energetic arch, followed by a scherzo and a delicately scored andante. The huge final movement is a turbulent struggle interrupted by 'hammer blows of Fate' which lead the work to its tragic conclusion.

The Philharmonia Orchestra is Anvil Arts' Orchestra in Partnership.

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Guide to Mahler’s Sixth Symphony

Danny Riley, 29th November

It was described as “the first nihilist work in the history of music” by the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. We look at the story behind Mahler’s Sixth Symphony.

“Yet another hard nut ... ”

Andrew Benson-Wilson, 21st April

“My Sixth seems to be yet another hard nut, one that our critics' feeble little teeth cannot crack”. It will “propound riddles the solution of which may be attempted only by a generation which has absorbed and truly digested my first five symphonies.”. So wrote Mahler in letters to the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg and the Austrian writer and musicologist Richard Specht respectively.

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