28 Feb 2017

Oxford Lieder Festival 2017: Gustav Mahler and fin-de-siècle Vienna

Gustav Mahler and fin-de-siècle Vienna will be the focus of the Oxford Lieder Festival (13-28 October 2017), exploring his influences, contemporaries and legacy. Mahler was a dominant musical personality: composer and preeminent conductor, steeped in tradition but a champion of the new. During this Festival, his complete songs with piano will be heard, inviting a fresh look at this ’symphonic’ composer and the enduring place of song in the musical landscape.

Mahler’s choices of texts, wider artistic influences from literature to art to nature and folk music, his Jewish background in a conservative Catholic city, his encounter with Freud, his encouragement of other composers, and more, will all be explored over the fortnight.

Mahler’s Vienna will also be placed in a wider context, with tradition represented in the songs of Schubert and Beethoven; an exploration of Brahms’ glorious melodic gifts; an in-depth look at Richard Strauss; and music by Hugo Wolf, Alexander Zemlinsky, Erich Korngold, Joseph Marx and others.

A late-night salon will look ahead to the Second Viennese School, including several of Schoenberg’s seminal works. Study days, readings, screenings, workshops and more once again make for an exhilarating Festival that will illuminate the era.

Some of the world’s leading singers and instrumentalists will take part, including Ian Bostridge, Sarah Connolly,Katarina Karnéus, Angelika Kirchschlager,Mark Padmore, Roderick Williams, Imogen Cooper, the Doric String Quartet and members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Passes will be on sale from 1 March from www.oxfordlieder.com/01865 591276.
Full Passes: £600/£510. One-week Passes: £400/£340.

General booking opens 1 June 2017.

www.oxfordlieder.co.uk