Composer

As reverence for nature grew under the influence of Enlightenment philosophy, so too did poetic expressions of wonder in life on Earth. Joseph Middleton is joined by Grammy Award-winning Fleur Barron and the captivating Swiss tenor Mauro Peter in a programme filled with heart-melting reflections on humankind’s relationship with the natural world and spiced with surprises, a Britten boogie-woogie and George Crumb’s haunting Processional for solo piano among them.

EPSG:4326

Fleur Barron mezzo-soprano; Mauro Peter tenor; Joseph Middleton piano

Wigmore Hall

The “Father of the Symphony” meets the composer who ushered the form into the 20th century. Haydn’s Symphony No. 80 is a refined gem of the Classical era that helped set the stage for the symphonic innovations to come. Guest conductor Peter Popelka then leads Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, a world-embracing work showcasing funeral marches, horn calls, and sublime love songs before a no-holds-barred finale.

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony

Severance Music Center

If Mahler’s first three world-encapsulating symphonies come from an adult’s point of view, his fourth wonders how a child’s perspective might be different. But the childhood dreams Mahler weaves are not all naïve. Though we eventually arrive at Mahler’s childlike vision of heaven – In Das himmlische Leben, the part he composed first – menace and terror are present too.

Mahler Symphony No. 4

The Bridgewater Hall

Joana Mallwitz, one of the most successful conductors of our time and recently featured in the acclaimed documentary portrait " Momentum" in Swiss cinemas, returns to Bern with Gustav Mahler's epochal Symphony No. 9. In his last completed work, Mahler, on the threshold of death, looks back on a world on the brink of collapse just a few years before the outbreak of the First World War. Through musical means, the composer not only senses the pulse of society but also processes his own personal grief.

Mahler's Ninth 2nd Symphony Concert

Casino Bern

A celebratory new work to launch the LSO’s 2026/27 season, and an epic voyage from the depths of despair to glorious rebirth.

Mahler 2 and Fujikura

Barbican Centre

Season Opening: Mahler 2 and Fujikura

Yutaka Sado

Teatro Auditorium Manzoni

2025 American Piano Awards winner Michael Davidman shines in Beethoven’s elegant Second Piano Concerto, as Music Director Jun Märkl guides a journey from Beethoven’s sparkling Prometheus Overture to the triumphant heights of Mahler’s exhilarating First Symphony.

Beethov­en and Mahler 1

Hilbert Circle Theatre

Chamber Concert 1

WDR Funkhaus

It was the artistic equivalent of raising the Titanic. When Gustav Mahler died, he left a vast final symphony tantalisingly incomplete. Five decades later, musicologist Deryck Cooke did the impossible and brought it to life, uncovering a lost masterpiece filled with puzzles and allusions – music in which cries of love and cries of pain resolve in music of shattering honesty and heartbreaking power.

Perth Concert Series: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - Mahler's Tenth Symphony

Perth Concert Hall

Icelandic Anna Thorvaldsdottir is one of classical music's brightest superstars right now, and the Odense Symphony Orchestra has made a big splash by, together with the BBC Proms, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, commissioning a monumental cello concerto by the uncompromising sound designer. The work was premiered last year in the US and at the BBC Proms, and the review from there reads: “Thorvaldsdottir's new cello concerto, Before we fall , is a hit, both sonically and intellectually… Her sound world, delicate and massive at the same time, is like no other. And Johannes Moser plays throughout with both nerve-wracking splendor and fierce intimacy.”

Mahlers 4.

Odense Concert Hall

A beloved San Francisco icon, Michael Tilson Thomas redefined the San Francisco Symphony during his extraordinary 25-year tenure as Music Director. In a one-of-a-kind event, MTT’s longtime friends and artistic collaborators—join the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in a concert celebrating his life and legacy. The program features music by composers closely associated with MTT, including Gustav Mahler, Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Charles Ives, and Aaron Copland, alongside world premieres by Mason Bates and MTT himself.

A Concert for MTT

Davies Symphony Hall

In turn a symbol of freedom, imagination, escape and independence, the vagabond has haunted the imagination of artists and poets as well as philosophers. In the work of Robert Schumann, he takes the form of a lonely minstrel who asks his king for a simple cup of wine; in that of Gustav Mahler, that of a saint who speaks to animals. And while Richard Strauss takes you on nocturnal wanderings, Francis Poulenc gives you a taste of a painter’s Parisian ‘vie de bohème’.

A Vagabond’s daydream

La Monnaie - De Munt

Mahler Symphony No 4 & Elgar Cello Concerto

St Peter ad Vincula Church

Existential unrest gives way to great hope and joy as Chief Conductor Domingo Hindoyan returns to conduct the epic Resurrection Symphony by Mahler, which was inspired by a hymn the composer heard at the funeral of a friend. Hindoyan has been praised for his powerful, emotionally charged, and precise interpretations of Mahler’s work and the mighty combined forces of the full Orchestra and Choir will capture the intense highs and lows of this symphony, which comes complete with a march of the dead, Gregorian chants and ethereal pastoral passages that revel in the extraordinary wonders of life.

Mahler Symphony No. 2: Resurrection

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

A celebratory new work by Dai Fujikura, and an epic voyage from the depths of despair to glorious rebirth.

On Tour in Osaka

Sakai Performing Arts Center

Nomura Holdings, Inc. 100th Anniversary Commemorative Concert

On Tour in Tokyo

ARK Hills

It would be hard to find a more fitting piece for a season opening concert than Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor. Its omnipresent symbolic allusions to resurrection can be aptly summed up by the words of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s hymn Die Auferstehung: ‘You shall rise, yes, you shall rise from the dead’ (Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst du). Light emerges from the darkness; the end becomes a new beginning.

Gustav Mahler

Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera

Mahler - Symphony No. 2

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Theatre

The night opens with Bela Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a work of striking contrast and luminous beauty. This late masterpiece balances clarity and intensity, brought vividly to life by our guest artist, an acclaimed pianist, Charles Richard-Hamelin.

Titans Awaken

Memorial University of Newfoundland

From apocalypse to apotheosis – in his Symphony No. 2, Gustav Mahler delves into one of humanity’s most profound questions: “Why have you lived?” His music traverses light and darkness, full of turmoil, sorrow, intimacy and earthy joy. Mahler pushed the boundaries of the symphony, incorporating folk songs from the cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn and, following Beethoven’s model, a magnificent choral finale. In this work, Mahler said, the listener is “struck down by clubs, only to be lifted to the highest heights on angels’ wings.” Daniel Harding conducts.

Daniel Harding conducts Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony

Berliner Philharmoniker

From the hesitant opening, the music seeks a foothold. Along the way, the life force breaks out. But in the end, Mahler lets go of the grip. In the slow ending, the music gradually dissolves. The quiet farewell that disappears into silence is among the most moving endings in the symphonic repertoire.

Mahler's Symphony No. 9 places enormous demands on the orchestra and requires an extra large ensemble. For the same reason, the concert is part of Copenhagen Phil's multi-year collaboration with Odense Symphony Orchestra to perform some of the greatest symphonic works – including all of Gustav Mahler's symphonies. The collaboration began in 2025 with Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony conducted by Pierre Bleuse and continues in the summer of 2026 with Mahler's 3rd Symphony in Tivoli.

Now the time has come for Mahler's fateful 9th ​​symphony – the last one he completed. A symphony that, according to the BBC, has been voted fourth among the world's greatest symphonies by 151 conductors. Great music that we can now share with the audience together with the Odense Symphony Orchestra.

Mahlers 9.

Konservatoriets Koncertsal

For the 19th century artists, storytelling and poetry was a big part of all artistic expressions. The arts merged, and poetry, literature and painting were part of many artists’ holistic palette. This was true for the composer and musician as well. They read poems to each other and interpreted music with great emotional involvement. This became a trademark of the Romantic period.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 1

Stormen Konserthus

In the encounter with great art, we encounter ourselves more than anything else, and few places in life do we have a better chance of reaching a deeper sod in the encounter with our innermost thoughts and feelings than during one of Mahler's unfathomable symphonies, which are in every way too great to describe in words. And this is perhaps especially true of his very last completed work, the 9th symphony, which he was so afraid to write because great composers usually die after the 9th. And so did Mahler. That is why it is often described as a farewell – to life, to the work of composing and to his beloved wife. But the truth is that it is a symphony that is like a piece of life, cut into thick slices; it contains everything in a way, and it lets us project ourselves into the pain, the joy, the melancholy, the love – and the sadness of having to let it all go. It is an indescribable experience to witness Mahler's 9th Symphony LIVE in the concert hall, and it is very rare that you get the chance, so we are taking advantage of this season, where we are performing it in collaboration with our symphonic friends at Copenhagen Phil.

The season opens with a spotlight on you. You can help the ETSO decide if four beloved pieces of music should be raised to the status of masterworks. Enjoy works by Mozart, Mahler, Franck, and Bruch, and vote in real time on whether or not these works merit entering the canon of classical music. Guest soloist for the evening is violinist Timothy Chooi.

Opening Night: For Your Consideration

The University of Texas at Tyler

Music Director Thomas Sondergard conducts two towering masterpieces in one unforgettable Season Opener. Piano superstar Alexander Malofeev shines in Rachmaninov’s glittering Fourth Piano Concerto. Composed in exile, it’s a work of brooding lyricism, lush orchestration and expressive melodies. Meanwhile, Mahler’s mighty Sixth Symphony is one man’s struggle against impossible odds, told in music of soaring emotion and shattering power. It’s the most gripping possible start to our new Concert Season. Be there.

RSNO Season 26-27: Season Opener - Mahler Six

Usher Hall

Benjamin Britten’s Sea Interludes from his hit opera Peter Grimes conclude with a violent storm. Here the tragic hero’s vision of happiness and inner peace is swept away by a final outburst from the orchestra. At the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin’s concert conducted by Simone Young, they are followed by the Adagio from Gustav Mahler’s unfinished 10th Symphony: a “tornado of life” (Jens Malte Fischer) that was written in one of the deepest crises that the composer suffered in the last summer of his life. Oscillating layers dominate the soundscape of Sappho/ Bioluminescence by the Australian composer Liza Lim, before the evening ends with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5.

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin I

Tchaikovsky and Mahler, though possibly divided by cultures or language, revered and championed each other in life. Their music, unafraid to release potent feelings or ask our biggest spiritual questions, still unites us all across borders, political conflicts and war in reminding us of our souls’ shared fragility and humanity.

Alice Coote mezzo-soprano; Sergey Rybin piano

When this musician sits down at the organ, it sounds as though a complete symphony orchestra is playing – including sophisticated solos on flutes, trombones and other wind instruments. This is because Shin-Young Lee loves programmes in which she can combine original repertoire with organ transcriptions of famous orchestral works. Alongside Marie-Pierre Langlamet, harpist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the internationally renowned organist presents a spectacular programme at the Musikfest Berlin ranging from Liszt’s virtuoso concert etude Un sospiro  (creating the impression of three hands at the keyboard) to Louis Vierne’s showpiece Carillon de Westminster.

Matinee: Organ & Harp

The Titans' Concert: There is stardust on the stage and gold in the flute when Emmanuel Pahud visits Aarhus with a world premiere – and the brilliance of the world star is matched by Mahler's mighty First Symphony.

Mahler 1

Aarhus Music Hall

In his Fifth Symphony, the tormented composer Gustav Mahler lays bare his inner world and transforms his longing for love into grand and deeply moving art. In the middle of the symphony the music softens as he meets his future wife Alma Mahler. Newly in love, he composes the fourth movement, which in 1971 spread across the world when Luchino Visconti used the Adagietto to intensify the atmosphere in the film Death in Venice, creating a whole generation of Mahler lovers.

Mahler and Death in Venice

Malmo Live Concert AB

The ballet company’s second major premiere of the 2025/2026 season will not be a single full-length production, but rather an evening composed of several works by different choreographers. The ensemble will present pieces in modern and neoclassical dance styles, showcasing the distinctive authenticity of each choreographer’s movement language—yet connected by the shared theme of the inner world, Czech roots, and the Czech spirit.

Inside

Theater of JK Tyl New Stage

As the season opens, we are thrown into the magical sound world of Swedish composer Anders Hillborg. Hear the world premiere of his new concerto for saxophone and orchestra. The soloist is the composer’s son, award-winning saxophone player Theo Hillborg.

GSOplay: Season Opening with Pekka Kuusisto

Göteborgs Konserthus

The Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra's journey through Mahler's symphonies with chief conductor Fabio Luisi has over the past decade created some of the most moving moments in the orchestra's history, and for this season opening, they will look together at Mahler from his most peaceful and clear-headed side.

Luisi & Mahler's 4.

DR Koncerthuset

Enjoy vibrant saxophone and shimmering sunrise as the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Pekka Kuusisto and Theo Hillborg launch the season. High energy is guaranteed with the sounds of Anders Hillborg, Ida Moberg and Mahler.

Season Opening with Pekka Kuusisto

On Tour in Ljubljana. Sweeping across 90 minutes, Mahler's mighty "Resurrection" Symphony grapples with themes of life, death and ardent faith.

Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection"

Ljubljana Festival

The jury was unanimous: the 2025 Music Prize of the German Economy goes to the young baritone Jonas Müller! Born in Lower Bavaria in 1999, Müller could celebrate not only the € 15,000 award but also his debut concert at Lucerne Festival. He impressed with an intelligent program that, as the jury noted, was “marked by authenticity and seriousness.” He follows the same principle in his Lucerne recital. Under the theme “Somewhere in the World,” he sings of longing for faraway places and for home, of dreams of love and of solitude — with settings by Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann, Gustav Mahler and Hanns Eisler. From Eisler, he performs six songs from the Hollywood Songbook: his contribution to this summer’s theme, “American Dreams.” Jonas Müller has already won numerous prizes, including as a duo with his piano partner Anna Gebhardt. Since the fall of 2025, the student of Christian Gerhaher has been a member of the Opera Studio of Oper Frankfurt, where he made his debut as Guglielmo in Mozart’s Così fan tutte. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praised him for “vocal elegance and a fine touch of comedy.”

Jonas Müller | Anna Gebhardt

Lukaskirche Lucerne

The charismatic Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin has been a regular guest at Lucerne Festival for the last 15 years — and one of its great audience favorites. He has appeared here with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and often with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra: each time a musical high point.

The Met Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin | Joyce DiDonato

KKL Luzern Concert Hall

Concert of the Paris Opera Orchestra as part of the Festival de La Chaise-Dieu

Felix Mendelssohn /​ Gustav Mahler

Festival de La Chaise-Dieu 

The Edinburgh Festival Chorus performs with a team of first-rate soloists and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of their former Chief Conductor Donald Runnicles, who is credited as making the orchestra sound ‘explosively alert’ (The Scotsman).

Mahler’s Das klagende Lied

‘How should I describe such a colossal crisis?’ Mahler wrote in 1909. ‘Yet I am thirstier than ever for life …’ Personal and professional loss had taken the composer to the brink, but even as he faced tragedy he experienced the pleasures of living with renewed intensity. It’s this strange, urgent ecstasy that runs through Das Lied von der Erde (‘The Song of the Earth’) – a collision of symphony and song, life and loss. This epic musical farewell meets the witty musical parting of Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony, with its famous final movement of ever-shrinking forces. Bushra El-Turk’s Mosaic opens the concert with nods to Das Lied, in a meditation on identity, otherness and exoticism.

Mahler’s ‘Song of the Earth’

Royal Albert Hall

Grandiose romanticism performed by one of the best orchestras in the world. Rachmaninoff and Mahler on the program of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. A song that is most expressive without words. A virtuoso piano concerto that is probably more “comfortable” than the previous one, only according to its composer. A symphony that took the genre to a whole new level. Each one is a beautiful, emotionally resonant piece. The orchestral version of Vocalise, a gem of the vocal repertoire, originally written for voice and piano, will open the concert, followed by Piano Concerto No. 3, with Isata Kanneh-Mason, who has performed at major concert halls in the world, from the Royal Albert Hall to Carnegie Hall, as a soloist, and recorded a number of exciting albums as a Decca Classics artist. After the interval, the orchestra will perform Mahler’s lengthy palette of emotions, his Symphony No. 1, which was premiered in Budapest.

Tour: La Chaise-Dieu

Saint-Robert Abbey Church, La Chaise-Dieu

Tour: Menuhin Festival Gstaad

Festival-Zelt Gstaad

Exploring new paths – this is one way to sum up the background to the three pieces offered at the concert. The concert will open with music by Schubert, who, in addition to inventing the genre of German songs – writing more than 600 of them –, after six symphonies arrived at an entirely new orchestral language, even if the piece ultimately remained unfinished. The colorful program will continue with the Bartókian Movement for Viola composed by György Kurtág, who was also searching for his own voice but had not found it just yet. The soloist will be Lawrence Power. 

Tour: Salzburg Festival

Felsenreitschule, Salzburg

“Encountering Nature” turns our American Adventures season toward wide skies and untamed landscapes, exploring how composers translate the natural world into sound. Copland’s Quiet City opens in hushed stillness, its solitary trumpet and English horn unfolding a spare, haunting dialogue that evokes empty streets at dusk and the quiet vastness beyond them. Intimate and searching, it captures the feeling of standing alone beneath an open sky. Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, “Titan,” expands that perspective to monumental scale, moving from pastoral dawn to storm-tossed intensity and, ultimately, blazing affirmation. Rustic dances, birdsong-like figures, and sweeping climaxes create a journey through nature’s serenity and power.

Encountering Nature

Riverwalk Center

Grammy Award–winning baritone Will Liverman and Grammy-nominated pianist Myra Huang return for a powerful program that includes American composer Robert Owens’s stirring song cycle Mortal Storm, which features settings of works by the renowned Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, and Mahler’s famous Songs of a Wayfarer, a deeply moving collection that evokes the anguish of lost love.

Will Liverman & Myra Huang Recital

New Mexico Museum of Art

The sensual timbre of Marie-Nicole Lemieux and the virtuosic sections of the Orchestre National de France: the ideal tools for interpreting two great pages of German Romanticism.

Mahler 5

Opéra Berlioz

Film music fan or classical music lover? The last Friday concert of the season offers both: We're daring daredevils, sailing with our audience and Erich Wolfgang Korngold over shimmering waves, setting off with Gustav Mahler into the dawn of young, new worlds. No screen pirates, it is said, were as elegant as those whom Erich Wolfgang Korngold honored with his dazzling music! The overture to The Sea Hawk is actually part of a film score, and Korngold's violin concerto also draws its most beautiful themes from various scores composed for the silver screen. 

Departure

Beethoven Hall

Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling’s limpid voice, blessed with honeyed tones and its sensitive response to poetic texts, inspires consistently glowing reviews. She and regular duo partner, Paul Rivinius, preface the heart-breaking Kindertotenlieder with sublimely beautiful songs by Mahler’s Swedish contemporary Emil Sjörgen and the aptly-named cycle Hjärtats Sånger (Songs of the Heart) by his much younger countryman, Gunnar de Frumerie.

Camilla Tilling soprano; Paul Rivinius piano

Before starting the tenure as Music Director in the 2026/27 season, Finnish sensation Tarmo Peltokoski performs at the piano with soprano Chen Reiss in a lieder recital. Reiss, praised as “a voice of silver brightness and clarity”, is one of today's most admired interpreters of song.

HK PHIL × HKU MUSE: Tarmo Peltokoski & Chen Reiss

The University of Hong Kong (HKU)

'Where other children would have nursery rhymes, I’d go to bed to the sounds of Haydn, Mozart and Schubert,' recalls Sir Simon Keenlyside, whose father and grandfather were both professional violinists. Those priceless formative years continued when he became a boy chorister, then a choral scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge, and set rock-solid foundations for his subsequent career as a wonderfully perceptive concert singer, one of the most exciting operatic performers of modern times.

Sir Simon Keenlyside baritone; Malcolm Martineau piano

The title is not misleading – Anton Webern's "Im Sommerwind" (In the Summer Wind) from 1904 is indeed an unclouded orchestral idyll, still firmly in the tradition of Liszt, Wagner, and Strauss. Almost nothing betrays the future avant-garde artist – except perhaps the 20-year-old's already perceptible sensitivity for the finest sound blends. The germ of Mahler's Second Symphony was also a one-movement symphonic poem. It was initially titled "Totenfeier" (Funeral Celebration). This ultimately evolved into the five-movement "Resurrection Symphony," which transcends all boundaries in every respect. The finale, based on the chorale "Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst Du" (Resurrection, yes you will rise), features a huge orchestra, an equally large choir, and two vocal soloists, unfolding with poignant power.

8th Symphony Concert

Eurogress Aachen

1st Festival Chamber Concert: Recital Marlene Gomes

Munich Residence

Next Level shatters all common stereotypes of a classical concert! This requires unconventional, experimental, and inspiring characters on stage and an open-minded audience that is curious about unusual program combinations, wants to be close to the concert hall with a drink in hand, and appreciates the dialogue with the musicians. Next Level, the other face of classical music – new, unsettling, exciting, intoxicating.

Symbiotic Clash

Tobacco Quarter Hall 1

The programme is a love letter to 20th-century song in all its forms. 

From the soaring romanticism of Alma Mahler and Richard Strauss to the bittersweet elegance of Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim, this concert brings together worlds that rarely meet. 

You’ll hear music from beloved films and musicals alongside lush orchestral arrangements of song cycles and solo pieces all carefully curated to tell a story that is moving, varied and richly expressive.

Fantasia Orchestra with Niamh O’Sullivan

Smith Square Hall

Austrian baritone Florian Boesch has earned his place among the immortals of Lieder singing as an artist famed for his deep love of poetic words and their musical expression. As the son and grandson of singers, he absorbed the art by osmosis as a child and, following studies with his grandmother, then with fellow baritone Robert Holl, came of age as a recitalist at the world’s leading concert venues. A regular guest at Wigmore Hall since the early 2000s, he returns with a typically compelling programme.

Florian Boesch baritone; Malcolm Martineau

Donato Renzetti conducts the Orchestra della Fondazione Carlo Felice Music by Gustav Mahler

Mahler 6

Carlo Felice Theater

A concert program featuring iconic film scores by Hans Zimmer in arrangements by Lucy Landymore, complemented by works by Lucy Landymore, Johann Sebastian Bach, Gustav Mahler and Philip Glass.

Lucy Landymore & Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin

Forum alte Werft

Cornelius Meister and the Staatsorchester Stuttgart conclude their multi-year Gustav Mahler cycle with three concerts. Since 2018, they have performed all nine of the Viennese composer’s symphonies together. In just one week, the Stuttgart Liederhalle offers a unique overview of Mahler’s symphonic oeuvre: from the world-embracing First to the tragic Sixth and the pensive, introspective Ninth.

6. Symphony Concert(s)

Beethoven Hall (Beethovensaal)

Gustav Mahler's music focused on humanity in all its facets of life and emotion. Whether man longs for deliverance or to simply sit with others in a tavern are, for Mahler, merely different aggregate states of a single, infinitely precious existence. His 9th Symphony is not an optimistic work, but rather one of the assessment of a life. It is ambivalent, doubtful, even fearful.

Mahler

Meistersingerhalle

Esteemed interpreter of Gustav Mahler’s works, Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts The Met Orchestra in the composer’s Fourth Symphony. Though it’s the most compact of Mahler’s grand compositions, it contains numerous iconic moments—from its sleigh-bell opening, to a country fiddle solo performed by “Death,” to the fourth movement’s groundbreaking combination of solo voice and orchestra, showcasing mezzo-soprano extraordinaire Joyce DiDonato in this performance. DiDonato is also featured in Mahler’s five-song Rückert-Lieder. A selection by the late Saariaho, one of the great composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, completes the program.

The Met Orchestra 2026 Concert 3

Carnegie Hall

For the first time, the Czech Philharmonic is opening the doors of its own subscription series to the LSO. Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem is heard alongside Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano.

On Tour in Prague

Rudolfinum

For the first time, the Czech Philharmonic is opening the doors of its own subscription series to the London Symphony Orchestra symbolically on the 50th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten. His Sinfonia da Requiem will be heard alongside Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, a work that the conductor Antonio Pappano calls a celebration of the beauty of life.

London Symphony Orchestra • Antonio Pappano

After opening the season with Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 7, Chief Conductor Marcus Bosch concludes the Philharmonic Concert series with the composer's Symphony No. 9 – and it's time to say goodbye. Composed in Toblach and New York, this large-scale symphony is Mahler's last completed work. The then New York Chief Conductor looks back with nostalgia, bids farewell, and seems to capitulate with his visions. The result was an impressive and bold sonic edifice, with which he builds a world using every means at his disposal – ultimately crossing the threshold to modernity.

10th Philharmonic Concert / Farewell

Volkstheater Rostock - Big House

Mahler Strauss Martinů Borodin

Gasteig HP8

Mahler’s Resurrection is a colossal work of drama, beauty, and power. From its gripping opening funeral march to its earth-shaking finale, this is music on the grandest possible scale that demands to be experienced live.

BBC Philharmonic - Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection’

This is a chance to hear her rarely performed Harp Concertino.  This is followed by Mahler’s wonderful Symphony no.4 with part for soprano in the last movement. The conductor is Rebecca Miller, well known for her electrifying and inspired performances.

Spotlight on the Harp

‘The whole thing sounds as though it came to us from some other world. I think there is no one who can resist it. One is battered to the ground and then raised on angel’s wings to the highest heights.’ – Gustav Mahler

Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection’

Dive into the depths of Mahler’s emotionally charged Symphony No. 6 with Jun Märkl. Known as the “Tragic,” this symphony journeys through moments of hope, despair, and heroism, showcasing Mahler’s powerful orchestration. Experience one of his most intense and introspective works. This work will be performed without intermission.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 6

Friday Concert No. 7 »The Song of the Earth«

Volkshaus Jena

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony began with a journey on the water: “I got into the boat …. At the first stroke of the oars, the theme (rather, the rhythm and character) of the introduction came into my head.” This journey glides through the nocturnal world of a feverish imagination, with the composer’s genius always lighting the way. We pass through twilight realms of fairytales, of phantoms, of serenading guitar, before emerging to hear Mahler greeting the full light of a sunny day. It remains his most mysterious and rarely heard symphony. Drawn by its emotional complexity, Music Director Xian Zhang wanted her first Mahler symphony in Seattle to be his Seventh — our first performances of it in 20 years.

Xian Conducts Mahler 7

Benaroya Hall

When Beethoven wrote his Fifth and final piano concerto in 1809, Vienna was besieged by Napoleon's troops. The sounds of war and economic uncertainty – his patron Archduke Rudolf had left the city – influenced the creation of the work. Beethoven composed a piano concerto with an exceptionally new form for the time, in which the soloist alternates between heroic and peaceful moments. Despite the difficult circumstances, the work does not reflect fatalism, but rather a solemn struggle for freedom and against oppression. Gustav Mahler's First Symphony also reflects intense personal experiences. His unhappy love for the singer Johanna Richter inspired him to create the "Songs of a Wayfarer," from which he incorporated motifs into the first and third movements of the symphony. In an emotional state of exception, Mahler completed the symphony in just six weeks. The premiere in Budapest in 1889 was met with incomprehension, prompting Mahler to revise the work multiple times. Today, it is among his most frequently performed symphonies.

Sir Donald with Mahler

Palace of Culture

Rousing. Moving. Idyllic. Mahler carries us from deep despair to joyful optimism, and Elgar paints affectionate portraits of friends and family. Dedicated to Michael Tilson Thomas.

Elgar and Mahler

This experiment explores the unique qualities of Mahler’s writing, in which the interplay between voices and sections of the orchestra is conversational, almost dramatic, as if he heard the different instruments as people, living the experience of the symphony.
You will hear Mahler’s masterpiece in changing surround-sound, finding yourself at the very heart of the music as its vast sonic world unfolds. From the hazy glow of the opening to the ferocious outcry of a storm, every moment is both felt and heard with exhilarating immediacy.

The Mahler Experiment

Samuel VanLoo, trumpet

Northwestern Bienen School of Music

We begin our final concert of the season with one of Mozart’s best-known and most beloved works: Eine kleine Nachtmusik (or A Little Night Music) and like most of Mozart’s works, it sounds so simple and completely belies the composer’s sophistication. We actually don’t know for sure why Mozart composed this piece. He rarely composed without a specific purpose or commission. And there’s no mention of this work in his letters or those of his contemporaries. All we know is that he finished it when he was 31 years old in Vienna—the same year he wrote his opera Don Giovanni. Maybe it was one of several works written for a friend of his, Gottfried von Jacquin, in Vienna. Jacquin’s sister, Franziska, was a pupil of Mozart, and together, they met as a group at Jacquin’s home for what they called “discussions, games, and merrymaking.” Mozart actually wrote several works for the Jacquin household, and A Little Night Music may well have been one of them. And maybe it’s an example of party music—who knows? In any case, it is great music, lots of fun to play and to listen to.

Composer

Gustav Mahler

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 5, 2026

Musical encounter November 5 · Opéra national de Paris

5 - 7 Nov, 2026

Iván Fischer conducts Mahler’s Fifth Symphony · Berliner Philharmoniker

Nov 6, 2026

Leeds Song: Mary Bevan and Joseph Middleton · Leeds Conservatoire

Nov 6, 2026

Alice Sara Ott plays Beethoven · London Philharmonic Orchestra

Nov 6, 2026

Alice Sara Ott Plays Beethoven · Southbank Centre

Past events

Oct 31, 2026

Fleur Barron mezzo-soprano; Mauro Peter tenor; Joseph Middleton piano · Wigmore Hall

Oct 30 - Nov 1, 2026

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony · The Cleveland Orchestra

About

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