FULL KINDERTOTENLIEDER (Mahler) Stockholm 2025 Nina Stemme
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Kindertotenlieder
- Composer: Mahler Gustav
- Libretto: Friedrich Rückert
- Venue & Opera Company: Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden
- Recorded: March 13, 2025
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Nina Stemme
- Conductor: Ryan Bancroft
- Orchestra: Kungliga Filharmonikerna
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Konserthuset
- Date Published: 2025
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: Konserthuset FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
PROGRAM:
Freya Waley-Cohen Demon (Kungliga Filharmonikernas sambeställningsverk)
Gustav Mahler Kindertotenlieder
Interval
Carl Nielsen Symfoni nr 4 ’’Det uudslukkelige’’
The concert begins with Demon by the British-American composer Freya Waley-Cohen (born 1989) – a co-commissioned work by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra premiered in 2023 by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. She found inspiration in old folk tales from the British Isles, chilling stories where a demon can manifest anywhere – here as both menacing and playful orchestral music.
Menacing indeed. Mahler’s heartbreaking Kindertotenlieder – Songs on the Death of Children – has tragic points of connection with Mahler’s own life, and the composition would also come to seem like a premonition: a few years later, Mahler’s eldest daughter Maria died. The poems by Friedrich Rückert that Mahler chose deal with the parents’ grieving process and the slow reconciliation with a painful reality. The world-renowned Nina Stemme is the soloist in this poignant music.
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s chief conductor Ryan Bancroft leads the orchestra in this program, which concludes with Carl Nielsen. Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony is subtitled “Det uudslukkelige” (The Inextinguishable). It’s dramatic music written in the midst of the First World War, famous in part for its duel between two timpanists.