Kazushi Ono takes the next step – a giant step in fact – in his journey with Mahler. With the Brussels Philharmonic, the Vlaams Radiokoor, Octopus Kamerkoor and the children’s choir of Opera Ballet Flanders all together on stage, it will certainly be a crowd. But our musical director expertly guides everyone through a symphony that fascinates him beyond measure.

-----

“It is nothing but humour, cheerfulness and enormous pleasure about the world,” said Gustav Mahler about his Third Symphony on one of his more positive days. The score is certainly a little more versatile than that, but it is definitely ‘enormous’. More than an hour and a half of music, with a gigantic string section and passages for alto solo, and women’s and boys’ choir.

While composing the Third Symphony – a process that took more than three years – Gustav Mahler retired during the summers to a small house on the Attersee in Austria, so as to be able to write in absolute silence.

In order to keep his studio as quiet as possible, Mahler’s sister Justine even paid the local youths to remove all the crow’s nests in the area, so that the noisy chirping of the birds would not disturb her brother. Perhaps that’s why this became a symphony with such powerful imagery. “Those who know the place should recognize it in the music,” Mahler said. And he was right; you can almost hear the chirping of the local birdlife in the notes.