Oxalys - Margriet van Reisen - Henk Neven

Mahler aims to make the infinite variety of aspects of our existence audible in his music. He keeps flinging his listeners back and forth between extremes: between the trivial and the exalted, the fleeting and the eternal, compassion and mockery.

His works pass through every kind of world imaginable: innocent birdsong weaves around cynical funeral marches, complex counterpoint struts alongside banal folk music and never-ending elegiac melodies snuggle up to clunky peasant dances.

The first part of this opening concert (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) is dominated by everyday life in a century in which most men were soldiers and women were mothers, but in which real emotions were surely like today’s. The second part (Der Abschied) has a dramatic new depth, in which the everydayness blurs into a time that is no longer measurable or receptive.

Opening concert of the Academic year KU Leuven / Sponsor: Peeters & BNP Paribas Fortis