ENGLISH: Mahler Festival 2020 Presents Mahler Festival Online

This new festival includes an extensive line-up of digital programming: more than twenty-five streams will be shown via social media and our website. Mahler symphonies have been selected from the Concertgebouw Orchestra collection of recent recordings, including performances led by past chief conductors Mariss Jansons and Bernard Haitink. Baritone Thomas Oliemans and the Alma Quartet have created new programmes for two special editions of the Empty Concertgebouw Sessions. Also Mahler's Universe – a documentary series shot the world over featuring interviews with renowned individuals such as Jessye Norman, Jaap van Zweden and granddaughter Marina Mahler – will be made available for viewing. In the meantime, the Concertgebouw is working hard on plans for a future Mahler Festival.

An Online Alternative to the Real Festival

In 2013 the Royal Concertgebouw set about organising the third Mahler Festival in a hundred years, a unique gathering of top orchestras from all around the world. The present corona crisis has made staging the 2020 festival impossible. Managing Director Simon Reinink: ‘Not only are we enormously disappointed, this applies to the musicians and audiences as well. It makes me proud in these uncertain times in both society and the cultural sector that, working together with our partners, we have managed to launch a superb alternative in a short amount of time. We hope with this initiative to reach as many people as possible and to offer comfort in trying times through Mahler's music.’

High-Quality Programme

The original Mahler festival involved six different orchestras, but for our online festival the choice has fallen on streaming Mahler’s symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde performed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Acting Managing Director David Bazen: ‘I’m incredibly pleased that thanks to modern technology we can organise a fitting alternative to the Mahler Festival. The Concertgebouw orchestra’s rich Mahler tradition has resulted in numerous recordings of the composer’s symphonies and orchestral song cycles. For each piece we had the choice of several high-quality recordings of performances conducted by the best in the world. While this is quite different from experiencing a new work live in the Great Hall, the advantage is being able to hear the most splendid Mahler recordings at home enriched by expert commentary.’ Every day at 3:00 p.m. a member of our own orchestra will introduce the evening’s 8:30 p.m. symphony with a special presentation.

Documentaries: Mahler's Universe

The universal themes of Mahler's music are relevant for everyone today. With this in mind, the Royal Concertgebouw sent a group of documentary filmmakers all around the world. The result is a series of ten documentaries meant to introduce the composer’s symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. Musicians and experts such as Anna Stoll Knecht, Roderick Williams, Lahav Shani and Thomas Hampson express their thoughts. The composer’s intriguing life story is told by his granddaughter Marina Mahler. Also, important to mention here is the film series’ interview with Jessye Norman that took place last summer, a few weeks before her untimely death. In an inspiring way, Norman reflects on Mahler's music and her performances in The Concertgebouw. This documentary series is supported by the Mahler Foundation .

Documentary Mahler's Universe on YouTube & Facebook
• 8 thru 17 May 2020, daily at 8:00 p.m.

Empty Concertgebouw Sessions

As part of the Mahler Festival Online, two live performances of Mahler’s music will be broadcast from an audience-free Concertgebouw. Baritone Thomas Oliemans will perform a programme of several Mahler’s songs taken from Hans und Grethe and Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen. The Alma Quartet, comprised of members of the Concertgebouw’s orchestra, will perform an arrangement of the Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5 and – together with pianist Nino Gvetadze – part of the Piano Quartet in A minor.