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SALZBURG FESTIVAL | CONCERT 2013

Gustav Mahler Cycle • Mahler VIII

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Grosses Festspielhaus

Performers: Gustavo Dudamel, Emily Magee, Petra Maria Schnitzer, Anna Prohaska, Yvonne Naef, Birgit Remmert, Klaus Florian Vogt, Detlef Roth, Robert Holl, Pablo Castellanos, Choristers of "Superar", Salzburger Festspiele und Theater Kinderchor, Wolfgang Götz, Simón Bolívar National Youth Choir of Venezuela, Wiener Singverein, Johannes Prinz, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela
Works by Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler Cycle • Mahler III

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Grosses Festspielhaus

Performers: Gustavo Dudamel, Anna Larsson, Salzburger Festspiele und Theater Kinderchor, Wolfgang Götz, Simón Bolívar National Youth Choir of Venezuela, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela
Works by Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler Cycle • Mahler V

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Grosses Festspielhaus

Performers: Zubin Mehta, Pinchas Zukerman, Vienna Philharmonic
Works by Wolfgang A. Mozart, Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler Cycle • Mahler VII

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Grosses Festspielhaus

Performers: Gustavo Dudamel, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela
Works by Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler Cycle • Mahler II

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Grosses Festspielhaus

Performers: Mariss Jansons, Genia Kühmeier, Gerhild Romberger, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Peter Dijkstra, WDR Rundfunkchor, Nicholas Kok, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Works by Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler Cycle • Mahler I

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Felsenreitschule

Performers: Jesús Parra, Simon Rattle, National Children’s Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela
Works by George Gershwin, Alberto Ginastera, Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler Cycle • Mahler IV

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Felsenreitschule

Performers: Cornelius Meister, Christian Tetzlaff, Dorothea Röschmann, ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien
Works by Bedřich Smetana, Harrison Birtwistle, Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler Cycle • Mahler VI

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Grosses Festspielhaus

Performers: Michael Gielen, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg
Works by Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler Cycle • Mahler IX

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Grosses Festspielhaus

Performers: Riccardo Chailly, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Works by Gustav Mahler

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EDITORIAL 2013

The Concert 2013

by Alexander Pereira and Florian Wiegand

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Gustav Mahler
The Nine Symphonies

“To me, symphony means: building a world, using all the means of existing technique.” This widely quoted statement by Gustav Mahler about his Symphony No. 3 could also stand as a motto for his entire oeuvre. His world was the Danube Monarchy, which had long become hopelessly disparate in its variety and all its contradictions and contrasts – and this also gave rise to the stylistic oppositions, extreme contrasts and astounding simultaneities typical of Mahler: he incorporated not only natural sounds and folk songs, but also military marches, brass band fanfares and dance music into his works for the bourgeois concert hall, giving them equal standing next to honourable “high art” – for which one of his critics suggested sticking the composer in jail for a few years. His approach was too daring and novel to remain uncontested, or to find broad and spontaneous acclaim. Marches leading to death, like in the finale of the Sixth, or accompanying a funeral procession that starts out measured, but then explodes into madness, as in the first movement of the Fifth; the fact that time and again, death seems to be fiddling ghostly waltzes, polkas cover up desperation, and Klezmer strains manage to laugh amidst tears – all these things were realized in music by Mahler “first of all, and in this form, only by him” (H. H. Eggebrecht). What we hear is reflected multiple times: music about music. Mahler’s œuvre points beyond the character of illustration, of mere amassing and inventory-taking, but it also formulates an utopia which he called a “longing beyond the things of this world” and which made him intervene in his own music, in the double sense – for example in the famous “breakthrough” of Symphony No. 1. “I tell you, at times some passages seem eerie even to me, and it seems to me as if I hadn’t written them myself. One is merely an instrument, so to speak, upon which the universe plays.”