Orchestre de chambre de Paris
Philipp von Steinaecker | direction
Beth Taylor | mezzo-soprano
Andrew Staples | tenor
Laureate singers of the Royaumont Foundation
This ambitious programme brings together a Bach cantata and Mahler’s Song of the Earth.
Bach Ich elender Mensch, wer wird mich erlösen, Cantata BWV 48
Mahler Das Lied von der Erde (arrangement by Glen Cortese, 2006)
Although Cantata BWV 48 expresses the suffering of a humanity aware of its failings, and The Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde) explores the agony of the individual faced with the futility of the human condition, Bach and Mahler also allow us to glimpse the possibility of solace. Mahler had a particular fondness for BWV 48 (1723), which he possibly even conducted. He may have been receptive to its trajectory from lamentation to hope. These same sentiments infuse the eighth-century Chinese poems which he set to music in The Song of the Earth (1909), arranged for chamber orchestra by Glen Cortese. Emotions shift – from a celebration of the beauty of nature and its fragility to the exuberant joy of inebriation, and from painful solitude to anxiety about impending death – right up until the final movement, which reconciles humanity and the world.
Production Orchestre de chambre de Paris