Riccardo Chailly conducts Mahler's Symphony No. 8
Opening Concert – With the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
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Cast
Ricarda Merbeth — Soprano
Juliane Banse — Soprano
Anna Lucia Richter — Soprano
Sara Mingardo — Contralto
Mihoko Fujimura — Contralto
Andreas Schager — Tenor
Peter Mattei — Baritone
Samuel Youn — Bass
Bavarian Radio Choir
Latvian Radio Choir
Orfeón Donostiarra
Tölz Boys' Choir
Riccardo Chailly — Conductor
Program notes
Succeeding Claudio Abbado as Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly conducts the musicians for the very first time. To open this 2016 Lucerne Festival, he chooses to perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, thus completing the Mahler cycle begun by Abbado.
Written in 1906, Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand was one of his rare works to be warmly received by the critics upon its premiere in September 1910. The two parts are respectively based on the Latin Pentecost hymn Veni creator spiritus ("Come, Holy Ghost, Creator") and the final scene of Goethe’s Faust II. The symphony breaks with Mahler’s purely orchestral writing. In his own words (August 1906): "All my previous symphonies are merely the preludes to this one. In the other works everything still was subjective tragedy, but this one is a source of great joy."
Requiring one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical repertoire, the “orchestra of friends”, as Abbado used to call it, is joined by four large choruses and eight superb soloists, ensuring this opening concert to be a first-class event.
Picture: Riccardo Chailly © Teatro alla Scala