Opening with a special event in honour of Betsy Jolas, whose new work the Orchestre de Paris has the privilege of premiering, the concert continues with Mahler, immersing us in an existential dialectic between joy and distress, finitude and resurrection.

Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony is an immense poem on the end of time, demonstrating the composer’s incredible ability to project his metaphysical angst into dramatic musical edifices. The first movement sets the underlying programme—no less than the human condition and our terrible mortality. With the sudden burst of the Dies Irae, this tumultuous movement then gives way to a happy Andante, in the rustic spirit of a ländler. But the tumult returns in the form of a frenzied rondo, for which Mahler deploys the ironic version of a lied from the Knaben Wunderhorn. After the Urlicht, the poignant vocal call to the ‘original light’, the final movement draws on Klopstock’s poem Resurrection to return to the insoluble inner battle of humankind. This major opus is preceded by a very special event, the premiere of a new work by one of the foremost composers of our time, Betsy Jolas.