Budapest Festival Orchestra, National Concert Hall, 10 September, 7.45 p.m.

 It is hard for us now to understand why the critics reacted with such hostility to this late Romantic and lyrical work which still demonstrates the strong influence of Wagner.

In 1907, Gustav Mahler experienced three serious blows: his eldest daughter died, he lost his job as opera director in Vienna and he was diagnosed with an incurable illness. At this low point in his life, Theodor Pollak drew his attention to the anthology A Chinese Flute which contained Chinese poems in free translations by Hans Bethge. Mahler picked six to set to music. These poems are about the Earth, the beauty of human life and its hopelessness – themes that preoccupied Mahler all his life. 

This song cycle can be seen as the ultimate summation of the results and contradictions of Romanticism, as well as heralding a new musical world. “Eternally... Eternally...”, sings the solo at the end of Abschied (“The Farewell”), the sixth song in the cycle. It is a farewell to the beauty of life. With this work, the fifty eight year old Mahler was also saying farewell to himself. He never lived to hear the première of Das Lied von der Erde.

Christianne Stotijn graduated first as a violinist in 2000 and then as a singer in 2003 from the Amsterdam Music Academy. As an opera singer, she made her debut in the Paris Opera in 2003 and in 2006 appeared at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Born in the United States, Robert Dean Smith is a welcome guest in the world’s leading opera houses, and since 1997 has been an important participant at the Bayreuth Festival."

Conductor: Iván Fischer
Soloists: Christianne Stotijn – mezzo-soprano, Robert Dean Smith – tenor
Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, op. 4
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde

Ticketprices: 3200.- 4150.- 6000.- HUF

Source: Palace of Arts