We reunite with our Conductor Emeritus Sir Donald Runnicles, in celebration of his 70th birthday. Join the orchestra to experience the works of Gustav Mahler and Anton Bruckner – two late-Romantic musical titans – and to celebrate Runnicles’s position as the leading Scottish conductor of his generation.
For over a decade of his life, Mahler set the German folk poems of Des Knaben Wunderhorn to music. The poetry collection was assembled by writers Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, years before the Brothers Grimm took to publishing folklore. Paying tribute to Germanic literature, Mahler’s orchestral songs are witty, poignant, and passionate.
Bruckner dedicated his magnificent final symphony to ‘the beloved God’. Its three movements form an epic spiritual journey that explores the full spectrum of emotions, from fear and despair to transcendent bliss.
The talented soloists Annika Schlicht and Thomas Lehman from the Deutsche Oper Berlin – where Runnicles is Music Director – join for the Mahler.