A love song by Gustav Mahler is at the center of this probing new work by eminent pianist and composer Marc Neikrug. Liebst du um Schönheit (“If You Love for the Sake of Beauty”), from Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, is “a key element to the drama,” Neikrug says, and, as it “embodies the message of love as an aspiration, a self-embodied posture, and a state of being,” it speaks to the emotional core of the work as well. A Song by Mahler centers on the changing realities of two characters: a concertizing singer who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and her husband, who is also her accompanist. This work of music theater is “an attempt to address the specific emotional evolution of this couple, touching on their love and their particular relationship to music” Neikrug says. “It is not an attempt at documenting the myriad aspects of the disease.”

EPSG:4326

A Song by Mahler

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

The FLUX Quartet gives the US premiere of Charlotte Bray’s Festival-commissioned string quartet Ungrievable Lives, which takes its name and inspiration from an art installation by Caroline Burraway honoring the world’s 13 million child refugees. The program also features the first-ever Festival performance of Ligeti’s absorbing, Bartók-influenced String Quartet No. 1 and the world premieres of works by Ryan Lindveit and Angela Elizabeth Slater, this year’s participants in the Festival’s annual Young Composers String Quartet Project.

FLUX Quartet

May 15, 2024

A Song by Mahler

Aug 4, 2023

New Music with Flux Quartet

FLUX Quartet