BBC Philharmonic: Transfigured Night
Creative TouristA graduate of the revolutionary El Sistema in Venezuela, Rafael Payare brings two great stories of love, anguish and redemption from the decadent, heady world of late 19th-century Vienna. Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht is the ardent, intimate confession of two lovers: their sorrows, their hopes and the peace they find under a starlit sky. Mahler’s sweeping Fifth Symphony, meanwhile, moves from an opening funeral march to a triumphant ending via the famous and much-loved Adagietto – a tender tribute to Alma, the composer’s wife.