National Symphony Orchestra
Jaime Martin, conductor
Simone Lamsma, violin

Berg Violin Concerto
Mahler Symphony No. 5

The National Symphony Orchestra’s new season is off to a great start, with the “brilliant” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) and “absolutely magnificent” (Chicago Tribune) Simone Lamsma joining the NSO and the conductor Jaime Martín for two monumental works.

Simone Lamsma is one of today’s most striking and captivating musical personalities, renowned for her “gratifying musical reflection and impeccable instrumental craftsmanship… making her violin radiate with a sound of rich sweetness and ‘a golden colour’ (Sydney Morning Herald).

Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto – his only concerto and his last completed work – is a heartbreaking requiem written following the death of the daughter of the architect Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler, widow of the composer Gustav. Dedicated “to the memory of an angel”, it is, as mourning often is, a work of turbulent emotions. But also imbued with amorous nostalgia, dreamy evocations of the lost child and, in its striking blend of serialism and traditional tone, it is one of the most moving declarations of love of the 20th century.

One of the repertoire’s shining gems and composed as a tribute to his wife, Alma, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is also a compelling love letter in musical form. Intensely poetic and deeply personal, it’s a love song presented as a prolonged, elevated serenade that seems to unfold in one long, hypnotic, spellbinding breath. Moving from funereal sadness to transcendent joy, at its heart is a weightless Scherzo and the sublime and ever-popular Adagietto¬, famous to wider audiences in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice.
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Presented by the National Symphony Orchestra