“I have got to accept the horrors of loneliness,” Mahler wrote to Bruno Walter before working on Das Lied von der Erde. He had just lost his daughter Maria to scarlet fever and been diagnosed with an incurable heart condition, yet he still wrote what musicologist Deryck Cook described as “the naked fusion of sadness and ecstasy” and a work of “indescribable beauty and poignancy”. Stuart Skelton and Catherine Carby join the ACO in Schoenberg and Riehn’s expressionist chamber arrangement.

Limelight Editor’s Choice

Standing face to face with death, Gustav Mahler did not cower from the abyss. He reached deep into his soul and conjured his final song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) – described by Leonard Bernstein as the greatest “symphony” of this master symphonist. It tells it all. The sweet bitterness of our brief lives. Darkness, light, cruelty, love, beauty and at last, catharsis.

Richard Tognetti directs this unusually intimate encounter with Mahler. Arnold Schoenberg, another titan composer of the 20th century, took Mahler’s signature mighty sound and arranged it for chamber ensemble, carefully preserving the texture and impact of the original. The arrangement gives two soloists room to shine.

Joining Richard and the ACO is Stuart Skelton, one of the great tenors of our time. This is a rare chance to hear him on his home stage, alongside celebrated Australian mezzo-soprano Catherine Carby.