In 1918, after a long hiatus lasting until the end of World War One, Richard Strauss composed his song cycle set to poems by Clemens Brentano. The first five songs are essentially a series of love poems, but the last one, Lied der Frauen (with the text "When men go to war...”), sings of the memory of the recent conflict, and so was not even performed at the world première. Nevertheless, this work conveys the nostalgia of romance and the yearning for a new beginning. Mahler composed his Symphony No. 5 in the same year that he nearly died from a sudden internal haemorrhage. After recovering his health, he began to compose with unprecedented creativity, during a period when he also found the love of his life. The first two movements of the five-movement composition relate thoughts conceived in the shadow of death. The third is a huge waltz-fantasy, with its deservedly famous Adagietto an intimate confession of love, and its stormy finale a triumph of life. Nothing could crown a spring evening better than a personal musical experience of the victory of life and everlasting existence!

Presented by: Pannon Philharmonic