Repertoire

Richard Wagner: Prelude to the first act of Lohengrin
Gustav Mahler: Rückert-Lieder
Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 9, Op. 95, B.178 ‘New World’

Artists

Matthias Goerne, baritone
Stanislav Kochanovsky, conductor
OBC

Programme

The prelude to Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin opera opens the programme with an almost mystically elevated atmosphere. Composed as a musical depiction of the Holy Grial, the ethereal fabric of the strings progressively expands until it reaches a radiant climax. The opera’s 1850 premiere was conducted by Franz Liszt.

Can the intimacy of a poem be amplified by a symphony? A rhetorical question, if we look at the works of Gustav Mahler, whose symphonies and song cycles are both highly expressive. Using five poems by Friedrich Rückert, Mahler conveys an intense lyricism, which the renowned Matthias Goerne will bring to life for listeners, from the spring-like simplicity of Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft to the expression of an ontological solitude in the most moving song ever written, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.

Antonín Dvořák’s Ninth was written in New York, which is why it is often referred to as the “New World Symphony”. A fundamental work of the symphonic repertoire, it reflects Dvořák’s fascination with traditional music and integrates the influence of the rhythms and melodies of enslaved people and indigenous dances into the European tradition, with inevitable nods to the composer’s native Bohemia, so far and yet so near.