Santtu conducts Mahler's Symphony No 1 | Philharmonia Orchestra

Hear the second of Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s Mahler concerts, opening the Philharmonia’s 2022/23 season.

“It sends shivers down my spine”, wrote Gustav Mahler after a performance of his First Symphony. The shivers begin with the barely audible opening notes, which bloom into a lush evocation of a spring dawn. There follows music that seems to have escaped from a Jewish wedding, a Viennese café, an uncanny funeral and an Alpine village dance – all leading to an ending so electrifying that the horn section can’t stay sitting down.

Emigrating from Austria to the United States in 1934, Erich Wolfgang Korngold became one of the most influential film music composers of all time. His Violin Concerto incorporates themes from several of his film scores. His emotion-packed melodies are in the hands of Carolin Widmann, acclaimed for her ‘rich, impassioned playing’ (The Scotsman).

George Walker’s gorgeous Lyric for Strings opens the programme. Like Samuel Barber’s better known Adagio, it began life as the slow movement of a string quartet. The lush string ensemble version has become Walker’s most popular work.