Not just conductor Riccardo Chailly considers Matthias Goerne »one of the greatest Mahler singers in the world«. His colleague, conductor Thomas Hengelbrock, also tries to work with the German star baritone as often as he can. After Goerne’s Laeiszhalle farewell concert with Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in December 2016, he now returns with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra singing Mahler’s deeply moving »Kindertotenlieder«.

The composer wrote these songs in 1904 while his children played – happily – in the garden, not knowing that his daughter would be dead three years later.

In Mahler’s last work, the unfinished 10th Symphony, you hear the sorrow and echo of those fatal blows. At the same time Mahler looks towards the future like a true visionary: at the climax of the Adagio he piles the notes on top of each other for a shockingly expressive »catastrophe chord« – the first »cluster« in music history.

In the second part of the concert Hengelbrock presents Beethoven’s »Eroica» symphony. At its centre stands a grand funeral march. In its time, it equally revolutionised the music world, and it still challenges the listener to be intensely attentive, from the first bar onwards. read less