Lucerne Festival Orchestra 1 – Opening Concert

In the summer of 1910, it seemed to Gustav Mahler as if the world were coming to an end. He had just returned from a tour in New York when he received a letter from the architect Walter Gropius — and discovered a declaration of love for his wife Alma inside. The affair hit Mahler hard. The comments he wrote in the margins of the manuscript for his Tenth Symphony, which he was in the process of composing, bear witness: “Oh God, why have you forsaken me?” Or: “Live for you! Die for you! Almschi!!!” The music itself reflects Mahler’s deep suffering: the Adagio includes an intensely dissonant chord clustered around the note A (as in Alma): a symbol of torment and struggle, in which Mahler exclaims his deep despair. He was unable to complete the Tenth. Only a few months later, he died from the serious heart condition that had been affecting him. But his death did not spell the end of the work. In the 1960s, the British musicologist Deryck Cooke made a complete performing version from his sketches, saving Mahler’s legacy for posterity. The Opening Concert will also feature the hauntingly beautiful Rückert Lieder, with the celebrated Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča as the soloist. And, to kick off the Boulez anniversary, we will hear his Mémoriale, a musical commemoration.