A bone that turns into a flute and denounces the killer…, this is the Brothers Grimm tale on which Mahler’s Das klagende Lied was based. With the virtuoso fingers of David Fray, the concert opens with the dramatic tonality of Mozart’s Don Giovanni overture —his Piano Concerto in D Minor.

On the one hand: a tormented Mozart and one of his darkest piano concertos — his twentieth, composed in the same tonality as his Requiem.  On the other hand: Mahler, composing a cantata haunted by death, Das klagende Lied (Song of Lamentation). In both cases, we observe artists using their genius to express the ineffable. Mozart is at his peak, making the piano dialogue wildly with the dark moods of the orchestra. Mahler is but twenty years old yet already able to dazzle through this perfect alliance of voice and orchestra, announcing his great symphonies and his Kindertotenlieder. A grave, elegiac concert.