SIMON RATTLE / MAGDALENA KOŽENÁ
Three legendary couples for a sumptuous concert. Married on stage as in life, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and conductor Simon Rattle return to the Verbier Festival with a magnificent programme centred on married love: the Seven Early Songs that Berg composed in his youth for his wife Helene and the famous Symphony No. 5 that Mahler wrote in the dazzled aftermath of his meeting with Alma Schindler.
Programme
ALBAN BERG (1885-1935)
7 frühe Lieder
Interval
GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
Artist(s)
- Verbier Festival Orchestra
- Simon Rattle conductor
- Magdalena Kožená mezzo-soprano
Simon Rattle and Magdalena Kožená perform Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle, Sz. 48 at Verbier Festival
Find out more
Helene Berg was particularly fond of the songs her husband Alban had composed in the early days of their romance. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the composer was still a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and the author of many songs inspired by Romantic poetry. In 1927, after the epic of his first opera Wozzeck, he selected, as an affectionate wedding present, seven youthful songs which he adorned with a radiant orchestration.
Likewise, the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 is associated with Visconti’s film Death in Venice, but in reality, the Austrian composer conceived this sublime melody for strings as a love gift to Alma Schindler. In 1901, Mahler met this brilliant young woman, herself a fine musician, with whom he would share an unhappy but passionate marriage. The entire Symphony No. 5 bears the mark of this emotional upheaval: from the funeral march of the first movement (Mahler nearly died of an intestinal haemorrhage at the beginning of the year) to the jubilant release of the finale. Music like a powerful passage from darkness to light, from illness to the affirmation of married happiness.
