75th Anniversary Season 2007/08 in the Royal Festival Hall Return to articles menu page > Mahler and the London Philharmonic Orchestra In February 1934 Sir Thomas Beecham's London Philharmonic Orchestra was a little over a year old. This was the month when the Orchestra had on its stands, for the first time, the music of Gustav Mahler, and so began an extended exploration of Mahler's muse and meaning that has resulted in some of the Orchestra's most scintillating performances, a process which is about to enter a new chapter. Mahler's music and the London Philharmonic Orchestra have always been close, even inseparable at times. As the Orchestra felt its way onto the new ground that was Mahler's sound world twenty years after his death, it discovered a rapport that has survived three quarters of a century despite complete changes in orchestral personnel. Bruno Walter and Eduard van Beinum laid the foundations, before Bernard Haitink's and Klaus Tennstedt's innate feelings for the composer's scores proved the midwife for ovations which brought even ushers and critics at the Royal Festival Hall to their feet. So why all this hot air? Because Mahler's music has qualities like no-one else's. He knew it; it just took a while for the rest of us to realise it too. Not since Beethoven's ground-shaking endorsement of humankind had such an explicit wake-up call been strung up with black dots on horizontal lines. Like Beethoven's music, Mahler's is proving timeless, ever ready to comment on the human condition, and ever relevant in the face of personal and global events. To travel from the 'Wunderhorn' magic of the first four symphonies to the emotional edifice of the Fifth is in itself a profound musical journey; its language a new musical tongue. Mahler pushes the boundaries of conventional tonal harmony to their limits. He prepares moments of spacious, delicate stillness with passages of unstoppable momentum, and cries out from within his orchestra with commands, pleas and prophecies that pin you to your seat. And from Beecham, via van Beinum, Haitink, Solti and Tennstedt, we come to Vladimir Jurowski, who opens his account as Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra at its newly refurbished home with his first reading of a Mahler score in front of his new orchestra. Cometh the hour, cometh the men: it's Gustav Mahler's work under Vladimir Jurowski's baton in Das klagende Lied on 19 September, a night that should prove historic. Mahler 2007/08 Wednesday 19 September 2007 Das klagende Lied > Wednesday 17 October 2007 Symphony 2 (Resurrection) An audio sample of Mahler's Symphony 2 can be accessed from the performance calendar page > Wednesday 24 October 2007 Symphony 1 in D An audio sample of Mahler's Symphony 1 can be accessed from the performance calendar page > Wednesday 28 November 2007 Symphony 4 in G An audio sample of Mahler's Symphony 4 can be accessed from the performance calendar page > Wednesday 12 December 2007 Symphony 3 in D minor An audio sample of Mahler's Symphony 3 can be accessed from the performance calendar page > Wednesday 16 January 2008 Symphony 5 > Return to articles menu page > Back to top >