Mahler in Toblach

To mark the opening event of the Gustav Mahler Musikwochen, the music of two leading figures on the European scene at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries takes centre stage in the Mahler programme in Dobbiaco. Strauss did not live to hear his Vier letzte Lieder, regarded as the poignant artistic farewell of a composer who devoted his life to music: written in the final years of his life, they were first performed only after his death and are now considered his musical testament. The form of the Lied is also found in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, a work capable of evoking the purity of childhood, combining it with the wonder of nature. Whilst, on the one hand, this Symphony definitively brings to a close the first phase of the symphonic output of one of the greatest composers and conductors of the fin de siècle, on the other, it ushers in a period characterised by greater simplicity and less inclined towards monumentality.