Synopsis:

In Summer 2009 Claudio Abbado and his outstanding Lucerne Festival Orchestra performed another symphonic work by Gustav Mahler: the Symphony No. 4. Abbado combines the orchestral work (which features a solo soprano in the finale) with Mahler's "Rückert-Lieder". Soloist in both works is the Czech soprano Magdalena Kožená. Magdalena Kožená does not only make the "heavenly joys" resound in the final movement of Mahler's fourth symphony. Before that, she devotes herself to the seraphic beauty and intimate simplicity of Mahler's Rückert Lieder. Practically all the songs that Mahler composed prior to 1900 were based on texts from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn", a collection of folk poems published by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim. From then on, Mahler turned exclusively to a single poet - the Franconian orientalist and translator Friedrich Rückert. Mahler confessed that the poems moved him so deeply that he sometimes felt he had written them himself. In the transcendent final Lied, "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen", he also quoted a phrase from the Adagio of his 4th symphony. Asked what it meant, he said that it personified himself. Claudio Abbado is undeniably a supreme Mahler conductor and his best selling recordings with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra symphonies No. 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 (on Blu-ray No. 1, 2, 3 and 6) have already been released on EuroArts have set new standards in interpretation of works by Gustav Mahler.

Cast and Crew:

Magdalena Kožená mezzo-soprano  
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Music: Gustav Mahler
Conductor: Claudio Abbado
Producer: Paul Smaczny
Director: Michael Beyer