An obsessive theme in Schubert, an irreparable episode in the lives of Gustav and Alma Mahler: when the death of a child strikes a family, when such violent emotions surge through the hearts of parents, music cannot console, it is pure revolt.

The OCG juxtaposes The Maiden and Death, The Young Man and Death and The Alder King with Schubert's "Tragic" Symphony No. 4, echoed by Mahler's Songs of the Death of Children. The forest, where the chase against the grim reaper takes place, harbors his inescapable victory: for millennia, it has been the place of all dangers.

"The loss of a child is unnatural: Schubert, at the dawn of German Romanticism, and Mahler, at its twilight, leave a giant cry against this anomaly of fate. Who better than the magnetic baritone Matthias Goerne, in demand the world over, to deliver these dramatic climaxes with force and accuracy?" - Raphaël Merlin

Program

• Franz Schubert
  - Der Tod und das Mädchen D.531
  - Der Jüngling und der Tod D.545
  - Erlkönig D328
  - Symphony No.4 "Tragic D.417
• Gustav Mahler, Kindertotenlieder