Proms 2012 Prom 69: Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra – Messiaen & Mahler

Under its current chief, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra has been recovering its lost Mahler tradition.

Their second collaboration this year includes one of Mahler’s most perfectly realised works, ‘the only Sixth, despite the “Pastoral”’ in the words of Alban Berg.This is music of exceptional range and power, whose fateful hammer-blows seem to portend the crises in Mahler’s own life and the wider world.

Our curtainraiser is an imposing and vibrant memorial to the dead of two world wars, a compositional trailblazer in its own right.

Discover the Music Download a short audio guide published on the day about a key work in tonight’s Prom: Tom Service talks about Messiaen's Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.