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, Le Chant de la Terre Closing a season means bringing people together. For this closing concert, organised as part of a festival of local orchestras, the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine opens the doors of its home – the Auditorium – to amateur orchestras from Bordeaux, asserting that symphonic music is a collective adventure shared by all.

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 tumult, a melody from the sketches of his unfinished Tenth Symphony emerges and asserts itself, like a persistent memory. In parallel, Le Chant de la Terre, a work by Gustav Mahler completed in 1908, unfolds a moving meditation on nature inspired by Chinese poems. A symphony with voices of rare intensity that concludes a great symphonic season with Joseph Swensen, who has successfully made his mark at the head of the ONBA.