Event

7:00 p.m.: Introduction

"A man deserves a few years in prison for something like that," the Viennese critics fumed long after the premiere of Mahler’s colossal Third Symphony – which had been a triumphant success in 1902 in Krefeld, a town that was rather remote and liberal by Viennese standards, with Mahler himself conducting the Cologne Gürzenich Orchestra.

His aim was to build a world through musical means, the composer explained, justifying the unprecedented scale of the symphonic behemoth. Mahler’s Third World begins with a dramatic march: Is this the arrival of spring, nature reawakening? Shorter than the half-hour-long first movement are the passages depicting the little flowers in the meadow and the animals in the forest. An alto solo addresses humanity directly, in Nietzsche’s words, followed by choirs of angels and women, heavenly jingling. Yet the final word of this world panorama requires no words: here love itself sings, "serene," endlessly radiant: an extension of the 19th century or a portal to modernity? From this point on, music history could only proceed differently.

Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne
Women’s voices of the SCHOLA HEIDELBERG
Rehearsal direction SCHOLA HEIDELBERG | Walter Nußbaum
Cologne Cathedral Girls’ and Boys’ Choir