English Symphony Orchestra’s Cheltenham Residency

Richard Strauss – Four Last Songs (chamber version by James Ledger)
Mahler – Symphony No.9 (chamber version by Klaus Simon)

Kenneth Woods, conductor -

Composed in the difficult years just after WW2, Strauss’s final masterpiece could well have
been a despairing, angry work. Instead, the Four Last Songs stand as one of music’s most
inspiring expressions of gratitude – for long life, for long love and for a world abundant in music and nature.
The Ninth Symphony of Strauss’s friend & contemporary, Gustav Mahler – his last completed work – sees the composer working through deep despair and resignation (shaken to the core by the sudden death of his daughter in 1907) towards a resolution which abounds in gratitude and love.