Mahler Symphony No. 4

‘There is no music on the earth which can ever compare with ours’. So sings the soprano at the close of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, describing a heaven where angels bake the bread and Saint Peter fishes from a limitless pond. Mahler builds his symphony towards this celestial setting of a poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, musically working backwards to forge a path from experience to innocence, complexity to simplicity and so too a journey from earthly life to heaven. Alongside, soprano Chen Reiss performs Strauss’ lieder of life and love: ‘And to the shore, the wide shore with blue waves, we will descend quietly and slowly; we will look mutely into each other's eyes and the silence of happiness will settle upon us’ (‘Morgan’).

General booking opens 8 February 2017 9:30 am