»Ewig!«

Franz Schubert
, Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, D 485

Gustav Mahler

‘s *Song of the Earth*With his 5th Symphony, Franz Schubert created a fully mature work at the age of just 19. The unusually small ensemble—without clarinets, trumpets, or timpani—evokes the music of his famous predecessor, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as do many of the motifs and harmonies. Under the musical direction of the internationally acclaimed conductor Giedrė Šlekytė, who completed her conducting studies, among other things, at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra will dedicate the second part of the concert to the symphonic song cycle *Das Lied von der Erde*, which Gustav Mahler composed just three years before his untimely death. Mahler wrote the six movements based on the text of Hans Bethge’s poetry collection *Die chinesische Flöte *. The final movement, “Abschied,” which lasts just under 30 minutes and fades out with the words “eternal … eternal …,” resonates particularly long after the music ends. In a letter to Anton Webern, his fellow composer Alban Berg wrote: “It is like the passing of life—or rather, of what has been lived—before the soul of the dying. The work of art condenses; the actual vanishes, the idea remains; such are these songs.”