Kocsis/ Bátori/ Orendt

The youthful Mahler first came across, and held in esteem all the way throughout his life, the three-volume collection of folk poems and songs Des Knaben Wunderhorn /The Youth’s Magic Horn/ published between 1806-1808. “It differs greatly from literary poetry, being full of natural and life elements, in other words, everything that I devote myself to,” he wrote. In the final decade of the 19th century Mahler selected texts from this collection alone to set to music, abandoning himself to a pantheistic attitude to life. The lyrical Schubert, who poured himself into hundreds of songs, remained faithful to his lyrical self in the far-sounding collective of the grand orchestra. The Symphony in C major dating from 1828 is one of the most significant opuses of the 19th century. His great contemporary Robert Schumann discovered the score that had lain forgotten for a decade after the death of the composer. The concert also provides excitement in the form of a ‘role swap’: hiding inside each other’s roles, the two composers, the extremes of Romanticism, show that they were capable of creating great things even in the face of the straitjacket of tradition. This is how we can come to know the songful Mahler and Schubert who was similarly a great creative power in the weighty symphony.