Gustav Mahler Totenfeier / Rheinlegendchen / Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld / Urlicht / Ich atmet’ einen Linden Duft / Revelge / Es sungen drei Engel / Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen / Trost im Unglück / Symphony no. 2, Finale
Conductor Manfred Honeck / Soprano Marita Sølberg / Mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter / Baritone Thomas Hampson / Choir The Prague Philharmonic Choir / Choir Boni Pueri, the Czech Boys Choir

The music of Gustav Mahler was not always as beloved as it is now. The innovative aspects of his composition – the collage, the juxtaposition of different musical idioms, the extreme intensity and variety of expression and the unusual instrumentation, to name but a few examples – were the cause of many heated controversies. In his lifetime, his music was often misunderstood and sometimes rejected wholesale. This was perhaps because his music was ahead of its time, a fact of which the composer was well aware: “My time will come”, he was famed for saying. His is instincts proved right, as his music now enjoys a favored place in the standard repertoire.

2010 will see Gustav Mahler’s 150^th birthday. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra will celebrate its namesake in a special way: on 7 July, the composer’s birthday, the orchestra will play an open-air concert in his birthplace, the Czech village of Kaliste. Mahler spent the first five years of his life here, where his parents ran an inn and a distillery.

A wide variety of events will be put on in Kaliste for Maher’s birthday: a reading about Mahler’s childhood, a lied recital with Thomas Hampson in the house where the composer was born and a choir concert in Kaliste’s church. The MCO concert, which will feature internationally renowned singers Thomas Hampson, Anne Sofie von Otter and Birgitte Christensen, is the high point of the celebration. The concert will be broadcast live on television and over the Internet.

The programme, conducted by Manfred Honeck, offers a representative sampling of Mahler’s output, with excerpts from the symphonic works and a selection of his songs. Of the latter, the orchestra will play individual songs from the great song cycles “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”, the “Rückert-Lieder” and the “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen”. Of the symphonies, the orchestra will play excerpts from the 2^nd and 3^rd symphonies, including the seldom-heard symphonic poem “Totenfeier”.

“Totenfeier”, in itself a stand-alone work, is actually an early version of the 1^st movement of the 2^nd symphony. The composition of this piece sent Mahler into a crisis. He felt he did not have the strength to complete the symphony, and thus replaced the title “symphony” with “Totenfeier”. Musicologist Richard Specht has named this composition “one of the freest symphonic movements” that Mahler composed.

The Mahler Chamber Orchestra will perform the music of its namesake in other concerts in 2010: on 12 March, Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct Mahler’s 1^st Symphony in his MCO debut; Daniel Harding will conduct concerts of Mahler’s 4^th Symphony in October; and Claudio Abbado will continue his Mahler cycle with LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA playing the 9^th Symphony.

The MCO will also feature Mahler’s works in 2011, as that year is another important year for the composer – the 100^th anniversary of his death.