Magdalena Kožená does not only make the “heavenly joys” resound in the final movement of Mahler’s Fourth. Before, she devotes herself to the Seraphic beauty and intimate simplicity of Mahler’s “Rückert Lieder”. Practically all the songs that Mahler composed prior to 1900 were based on texts from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”, a collection of folk poems published by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim. From then on Mahler turned exclusively to a single poet, the Franconian orientalist and translator Friedrich Rückert. Mahler confessed that the poems moved him so deeply that he sometimes felt he had written them himself. In the transcendent final lied, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”, he also quoted a phrase from the Adagio of his Fourth Symphony. Asked what it meant, he said that it personified himself. Live recording from the Lucerne Festival 2009

Repertoire: Gustav Mahler: Five Lieder based on poems by Friedrich Rückert; Symphony No. 4 in G Major
Conductor: Claudio Abbado
Orchestra: Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Performers: Magdalena Kožená, mezzo-soprano
Director: Michael Beyer
Producers: EuroArts Music International in co-production with ZDF/ARTE and NHK in cooperation with Lucerne Festival