Boston Philharmonic Orchestra: Das Lied von der Erde & Schubert's Symphony No. 8, "Unfinished"

Mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly and tenor Stefan Vinke, the world’s most celebrated performers of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth)—a symphony based on seven Chinese poems from the Tang Dynasty translated into German—will be the featured soloists at the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra’s (BPO) final 2022-23 season concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall on Friday, April 14, 2023, at 8 PM. The program opens with Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, “Unfinished,” one of Conductor Benjamin Zander’s favorite pieces. He will elaborate on both pieces during his popular “Guide to the Music” talk at 6:45 PM, preceding the concert. A live stream of the concert is also available for those who are unable to attend in person and wish to watch from home.

 

Das Lied von der Erde is widely considered Mahler's most supreme creation, a symphony of voice and orchestra that Mahler did not live to hear, having died six months before its first performance. It reflects Mahler’s life-long preoccupations: the transitory nature of earthly things, the intoxication of love, the horrifying irony with which death mocks all human endeavor, and the ultimate need for everyone to surrender his attachments to this world and accept what is to come. It is also commonly acknowledged that there are few pieces more transcendent than the "Abschied" (“Farewell”), the song cycle’s long final movement. 

Like Das Lied von der Erde, Schubert never heard his Symphony No. 8 performed, which provides a certain symmetry to the concert. Its two movements were discovered more than thirty years after his death in composer Anselm Hüttenbrenner’s study.

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