A horn calls in the distance; a clarinet sings a peasant song; and a solitary wanderer trudges through the forest. For the great Austrian song-symphonists, the words and images of German folklore opened up vast new worlds of poetry and feeling. Anton Bruckner shaped them into the most colourful (and lovable) of his nine vast symphonies whilst the young Gustav Mahler got straight back to the source, finding the strangeness and wonder that lie beneath the most outwardly innocent folksongs in his endlessly imaginative Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Mark Wigglesworth lets them play off each other in a concert that unites epic grandeur with the most intimate of emotions.
