When Gustav Mahler heard the first rehearsal for his Symphony No. 5 in 1902, he wrote to his wife about ‘this primeval music, this foaming, roaring, raging sea of sound, these dancing stars, these breathtaking, iridescent and flashing breakers.’
Mahler knew the world had never heard music like this before - a symphony unraveling one man’s psyche, his interior drama of love and live. It gave rise to music brutal, conflicted, joyous and disruptive that remains one of the most intense live music experiences possible.
Principal Guest Conductor Sir Mark Elder returns to Bergen for this performance of Mahler’s journey from forlorn doom to radiant joy - his most popular symphony and the work that set its composer on a new path.
If Mahler’s chief inspiration for the symphony was love, so was Wagner’s when he came to arrange music from his opera Siegfried as a birthday gift to his wife. The concert opens with some of the most intimate, touching music Wagner would write: his Siegfried Idyll.
