Earthly Happiness - Eternal Being

The first concert in this series juxtaposes two late-Romantic masterworks, both born from extreme personal circumstances.

Richard Wagner opens the evening with his Siegfried-Idyll WWV 103 (original version). Wagner composed it in 1870 as a private birthday gift for his wife Cosima - in its original chamber instrumentation, tender and full of personal allusions. Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde follows in the second half: in 1907, after professional upheaval, serious illness, and the death of his eldest daughter, Mahler found in the poems of the "Chinese Flute" a fusion of melancholy and life-affirmation. He himself called the work "probably the most personal thing I have ever created".

Performers: Mirko Roschkowski (tenor), Okka von der Damerau (mezzo-soprano), Bochumer Symphoniker, Ustina Dubitsky (conductor).

Table conversation with Bjørn Woll at 19:00 in the Small Hall.