Song of the Night: Mahler & Poulenc, with the BBC Singers

Sir Simon Rattle dives headlong into the dream-world of Gustav Mahler’s Seventh Symphony.

Gustav Mahler once said that the symphony should be like the world – ‘it should embrace everything’. In his huge Seventh Symphony, he sweeps from an overcast Alpine lake through love songs, nightmares and moonlit marches to a roof-raising finish hung with jangling cowbells and laced with pitch-black humour. In short, Mahler doesn’t get more Mahler-ish than this.

Not that Sir Simon Rattle needs telling., He’s been conducting Mahler since he was a teenager, and this wild, fantastic fairy-tale of a symphony is particularly close to his heart. ‘There’s only one Mahler – he takes in everything’, he says, and tonight he dives headfirst into a world of soaring emotion and untrammelled sonic imagination.

The LSO concert on 23 April will now feature an added second half, with a performance of Francis Poulenc’s Figure humaine by the BBC Singers, at the invitation of Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO.

The first half of the concert, featuring Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, remains unchanged.

Tickets: £65 £49 £35 £24 £18