Sarah Connolly, OBC & Ludovic Morlot

The Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) are the result of the overwhelming desolation caused by the death of one’s children. Gustav Mahler’s dramatic genius is at the service of his most moving works and a key to understanding the composer’s way of thinking. 

Los incensarios (The Censers) is a work commissioned by the Orquesta and  Coro Nacionales  de España. In it, Barcelona-born composer José Río-Pareja uses melodies from old saetas as a starting point to create, in his words, “a nocturnal journey in sound”.

 Polednice (The Noon Witch), a symphonic poem of superb descriptive power rooted in Slavic mythology, that also describes the tragic death of a child, where Antonín Dvořák displays the full range of his orchestral colours 

The great Russian symphonist Sergei Rakhmàninov wrote Die Toteninsel based on Arnold Böcklin’s painting, a piece of music of intense symbolic and narrative force about a boat trip in an allegory of the journey towards Hades.