LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

RICHARD STRAUSS — Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, orchestral suite, Op. 60

GUSTAV MAHLER — The Song of the Earth (Arranger: Glen Cortese)

The London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle, devotes its first concert to two of Wagner’s most eminent successors: Strauss and Mahler, who both responded in dramatically different ways to the question “What should I compose to follow Tristan und Isolde?” The former with the gleefully brilliant Le Bourgeois gentilhomme; the latter pushed even further into the last days of romanticism with The Song of the Earth. Both works, however, brought music into the modern era.