Mahler in Manhattan

Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine | Joseph Swensen, conductor Marianne Crebassa, mezzo-soprano | Mauro Peter, tenor Joseph Swensen, Mahler in Manhattan, French premiere Gustav Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde

Closing a season is about bringing people together. For this closing concert, part of a festival showcasing local orchestras, the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine opens the doors of its home, the Auditorium, to Bordeaux's amateur orchestras, affirming that symphonic music is a collective adventure carried by everyone.

With Mahler in Manhattan, Joseph Swensen imagines a solitary Gustav Mahler in New York in 1911, wandering through a noisy, insomniac city. At the heart of this turmoil, a melody drawn from the sketches of his unfinished Tenth Symphony emerges and asserts itself, like a persistent memory.

In mirror image, Das Lied von der Erde, Gustav Mahler's work completed in 1908, unfolds a deeply moving meditation on nature inspired by Chinese poems. A symphony with voices of rare intensity, which brings to a close a major symphonic season with Joseph Swensen, who has managed to impose his signature on the ONBA.