Mahler In Manhattan

About

The event is presented as the closing concert of the season within a festival of local orchestras. The Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine opens the Auditorium to amateur orchestras from Bordeaux, framing the concert around collective participation in symphonic music. The concept is musical and programmatic rather than a staged theatrical production. Joseph Swensen's Mahler in Manhattan imagines Gustav Mahler alone in New York in 1911, moving through a noisy, sleepless city. A melody from sketches for Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony emerges and persists as a memory. The new work is paired with Mahler's Le Chant de la Terre, a meditation on nature inspired by Chinese poetry. The vocal forces are mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa and tenor Mauro Peter, with Joseph Swensen conducting the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine.