Ligeti, Bartók and Mahler

Two brothers are rivals for the love of a queen. One kills the other. A musician fashions a flute from the victim’s bones. The instrument speaks the truth, revealing the horrid crime and naming its perpetrator, driven to fratricide in his quest to wed the queen. In Das klagende Lied we glimpse for the first time Mahler’s characteristic use of grotesque fairytales, driving marches and folk-conceived melodies. In Bartók’s First Violin Concerto the narrative is a little closer to home: in the work’s shapely, pining violin weave, is mapped out the composer’s hopeless love for the violinist Stefi Geyer.