The Philharmonia Orchestra, with the young and great Australian conductor Elena Schwarz, performs on the rooftop of a car park in Peckham.
The work of Gustav Mahler - emotionally powerful meditations on human life and its meaning - is musically complex and psychologically disruptive. In celebration of the legacy of a definitive composer of crisis and catharsis, our season ends with his monumental First Symphony, which he wrote when he was 28. Military fanfares, yodels, nursery tunes and birdsong sound over the hum of the universe. Mahler himself called its finale “the cry of a wounded heart”: music struggling to overcome darkness —dissonant screams; a flash of lightning from a dark cloud. Written for very large orchestral forces, it will be performed here by the Philharmonia Orchestra. Mahler’s pursuit of whole truths continues to feel relevant in our present moment of crisis; his radical thinking, his singing of nature, and his rich sonic world providing inspiration for generations to come."
