Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Mysterious sounds of nature and folk song melodies; extravagant dance scenes flanked by tender melancholy; the grotesquery of a funeral procession in which forest animals carry the hunter to his grave; and a finale that tears open the abyss of hell until heaven finally triumphs: Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 already contains everything that makes this composer so extraordinary. And there is probably no more popular, more palatable work by Mahler's admirer Arnold Schönberg than «Transfigured Night»: wordless but most musically eloquent, it traces a poem about love and forgiveness by Richard Dehmel. Voluptuous sounds and a variation technique modelled on Brahms unite to create a beguiling depiction of nature and the soul.