„Es war eine stolze Königin, / gar lieblich ohne Maßen, / kein Ritter stand nach ihrem Sinn, / sie wollt’ sie alle hassen.“ (There was a proud queen, / Her beauty did enthrall./ No knight could please her,/ She hated them all).
Gustav Mahler's symphonic cantata Das klagende Lied tells of ancient times. The work, composed to Mahler's own text, was begun in 1878 at the age of 18, directly after he had graduated from the Vienna Conservatory (Konservatorium der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien). For the text Mahler drew on Ludwig Bechstein's story of the same name, but above all on the fairy tale The singing bone by the Grimm brothers. The young composer, for whom it was his first large-scale opus (he himself described it as „a real problem child“), finished the work two years later; at the same time as he was writing a four-handed piano version of Bruckner's „Third“ with his student colleague Rudolf Krzyzanowski.
Like Mahler, only a few years earlier Bruckner had ventured into the fantastical and myth-enveloped realm of German folk poetry in his Symphony No. 4 in Eb major. He not only gave his work the telling title of Romantic, but also furnished it with programmatic explanations whose picturesque imagery, fluctuating between pastoral idyll and medieval knight romance, is drawn fundamentally from the world of saga and fairy tale.Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)
Symphony Nr. 4 (Romantische) in Eb major, WAB 104 (1874, rev. 1876–78, 1880–81, 1886–88) „1888 Version“
– Break –
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Das klagende Lied: Symphonic Cantata in three parts for Soloists, Choir and Orchestra (1878–80)
Emily Magee | Soprano
Tanja Ariane Baumgartner | Mezzo soprano
Attilio Glaser | Tenor
Adrian Eröd | Baritone
Soloists from the St.Florianer Sängerknaben
The Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno (Brünn)
The Bach Choir Salzburg
The Bruckner Orchestra Linz
Markus Poschner | Conductor
