Lamb & Hayward Masterworks
Boulanger, Barber, Mahler
Benjamin Northey – Chief Conductor
Lili Boulanger – D'un soir triste (Of a Sad Evening)
Barber – Knoxville: Summer of 1915
Mahler – Symphony No. 4 in G Major
Be drawn into the dark and foreboding sound world of trailblazing French composer Lili Boulanger’s D’un soir triste – written shortly before her death at the age of just 24, and full of musical expression beyond her years.
It was two years after the Second World War when Samuel Barber was commissioned to write Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by the Boston Symphony. Beautiful prose by the writer James Agee paints a picture of Tennessee in 1915, where a small boy lies in the grass and describes the sounds around him. Barber masterfully evokes childhood memories in his orchestration, and celebrated Aotearoa New Zealand soprano Anna Leese will sweep audiences up into the vivid scene.
Anna Leese also joins CSO for Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, where the final movement is a soprano solo describing a child’s carefree vision of heaven, with no music on Earth comparable to the music of the angels. It is known as Mahler’s charming and childlike symphony, complete with jingling sleigh-bells, but also brings the quintessentially epic Mahlerian orchestral forces that need to be experienced live for full effect.
Check out the repertoire on Spotify here
