Fin de siècle

The orchestra Divertimento Viennese presents compositions from exactly this time of departure. Star soprano Camilla Nylund will appear as soloist. Together they interpret works by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Arnold Schönberg and Gustav Mahler.

Schönberg's Notturno and Zemlinsky's setting of Eichendorff's Waldgespräch breathe the spirit of late Romanticism. Both youthful works had their world premiere in 1896 in a concert of the Musikalischer Verein Polyhymnia with Schoenberg as a "cellist playing as fiery as he was wrong" (quoting Zemlinsky).

Korngold's early works can be described as jewels of Austrian Jugendstil in music. The Brno-born composer has his roots in the 19th century, but he continues to spin the thread, ever more finely, with his emphatic and wide-ranging melodicism and his unmistakable rhythmic and harmonic sophistication.

Gustav Mahler's 4th Symphony is considered his "classicist" symphony because of its classical four-movement structure, the somewhat smaller orchestration and a generally very clear and transparent tonal language. He himself had actually only wanted to write a "symphonic humoresque." The work is inspired by the earlier composed song Das himmlische Leben from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" which now forms the 4th movement.

Mahler describes his symphony as a "mixture of mischievousness and the deepest mysticism"; the superficial cheerfulness is cryptic and always has a double bottom. The music already points to the beginning of a new epoch, is permeated with fractures and distortions. Cheerfulness and abysmalness stand directly next to each other. Finally, it is about farewell and the transition from earthly to "heavenly life".