Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Performers
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Klaus Mäkelä, Chief Conductor Designate
Program
SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht
G. MAHLER Symphony No. 1
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission. Please note that there will be no late seating before intermission.At a Glance
This concert presents early masterpieces by two of the most important composers in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Mahler’s First Symphony already has his signatures, including a memorable funeral march and a vivid evocation of nature. As Schoenberg, who shares this program, observed, “Everything that will characterize him is already present … Here already his life-melody begins, and he merely develops it. Here are his devotions to nature and his thoughts of death.” Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht is a transitional work in every sense, a twilight-of-Romanticism tone poem by a composer whose atonal revolution was soon to stand Romanticism on its head. Lush, indeed, luscious in its tonal richness, Verklärte Nacht nonetheless expands tonality to its limits, so that there was little place to go afterward.