A graduate of the revolutionary El Sistema in Venezuela, Rafael Payare brings two great stories of love, anguish and redemption from the decadent, heady world of late 19th-century Vienna. Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht is the ardent, intimate confession of two lovers: their sorrows, their hopes and the peace they find under a starlit sky. Mahler’s sweeping Fifth Symphony, meanwhile, moves from an opening funeral march to a triumphant ending via the famous and much-loved Adagietto – a tender tribute to Alma, the composer’s wife.
