WIR 1

Live and death are two inseparable facts of life. We hear the final heartbeat, the drumbeat on the path to the executioner, but also the sweetness of the final memory, the love of life itself. In Richard Strauss's "Death and Transfiguration", an artist looks back at the various stations of his life and discovers "Redemption, Transfiguration!". In Gustav Mahler's "Wunderhorn", love is as much a part of life itself as it is the final farewell. Dmitri Shostakovich's final symphony (1971) contains numerous references to his own work and that of other composers such as Rossini and Wagner - it looks back at the musical cosmos of this most significant Soviet artist; a cheerful and whimsical condensation of his life.

Baritone Benjamin Appl is the 2016 Gramaphone Magazine "Young Artist of the Year". A student of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Appl has performed with the BBC Radio Orchestra, the Academy of Early Music in Berlin and has taken the stage at the BBC Proms, amongst others. Conductor Christoph Altstaedt is the founder of the Junge Klangforum Mitte Europe, which he spearheaded from 2004 to 2011. He was interim chief conductor of the Tyrolean Symphony Orchestra in Innsbruck from 2011 to 2013, and from 2010 to 2014 conductor at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf.