We will perform this on 8 March, conducted by Adam Fischer with soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha.

Gustav Mahler is a composer known for two kinds of works: very long symphonies, and short songs. It is no secret that there are many connections between Mahler’s songs and his symphonies: the latter often use melodies taken from the former, which can sound rather as if the composer is saying, ‘Here is one I wrote earlier…’; some of his symphonies have songs inserted into them, the one in this programme being one example. And Mahler is not the only composer to be celebrated in these two genres: his Austrian predecessor Franz Schubert was known in his lifetime principally as a composer of songs, until the discovery of his ‘Great’ C major symphony, ten years after his death, placed him alongside Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart in the canon of symphonic composers.

The programme is all Mahler: the question is, is it all song? What is in a ‘song’ anyway, that connects a short work, in which the music sounds subservient to the words, to a long work in which there are no words (or where the words come as a surprise)?