Performer: Chicago Symphony Orchestra

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Music Director Designate juxtaposes his Finnish countryman's music on their shared national epic, the Kalevala, with the heroic life limned in the tone poem of Richard Strauss.

A strong world premiere of Aucoin's evocative and immediate Song of the Reappeared, a concerto for voice written for soprano Julia Bullock which sets vivid imagery by a poet who suffered under authoritarianism.

The Austrian conductor's loudest fortes and softest pianos pull together a dramatic arc from the Requiem, other Mozart works and chant. But it's not really a funeral. 

This May, the world’s leading orchestras and soloists gather in Amsterdam for a grand celebration of all things Mahler – a city the composer described as his “second musical homeland”.

The longest-running outdoor festival in the US and summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will undergo extensive redevelopment over the next four years.

Presenting all nine symphonies and the song cycles over ten days in Amsterdam, the Mahler Festival features the Royal Concertgebouw, Budapest Festival, NHK Symphony, Chicago Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras.