Gustav Mahler Alma Mahler Janáček Saraste

Alma Mahler (1879−1964, b. Schindler) wrote her first composition at the age of nine. She agreed to quit composing when she got engaged to Gustav Mahler, but she picked it up again later in their marriage. 17 of her songs are published, and the songs in this concert are a selection of those.

Gustav Mahler’s (1860−1911) nine symphonies are a landmark in the orchestral literature. He wasn’t able to finish the tenth before his death, but several attempts have been made to complete it from the sketches. The Adagio movement was more or less finished, and is the most frequently performed part of the symphony.

Leoš Janáček (1854−1928) was more than 60 years old when he got his big break internationally as a composer. He wrote a succession of masterpieces during the last decade of his life, and his magnificent Glagolitic Mass got its premiere in December 1927, eight months before his death.

Janáček was a glowing advocate of Slavic culture and very interested in languages. The title of the mass refers to the Glagolitic alphabet, the first Slavic alphabet and a precursor to Cyrillic. Glagolitic, which Janáček uses in the mass, was in use for writing Old Church Slavonic from the ninth century.