- artist:Het Collectief | Chamber Music Quintet
- featured artist:Het Collectief Reinbert de Leeuw Lucile Richardot Yves Saelens
- release year:2020
- style(s):20th Century
- country:Belgium
- formats:CD (Compact Disc)
- record posted by:Het Collectief Chamber Music Quintet
- label:Outhere Music France
- publisher:Alpha Classic
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The summer of 2019, Het Collectief was invited once again at the Saintes festival. On the programme: Gustav Mahler"s 'Ds Lied von der Erde', in a version for ensemble composed by Reinbert de Leeuw, who conducted the performance himself. This cycle of songs, which could also be labelled 'symphony', is based on 'Die chinesische Flöte' (The Chinese Flute), a series of Chinese poems about nature and life. For Mahler, this work means a point of no return: the tragic death of his four-year-old daughter and the diagnosis of his own heart disorder left the composer in a depressed mood. Accordingly, the work appears to express Mahler's personal farewell from life.
2020 will undoubtedly go down in history as that maligned year in which a tiny virus turned the world upside down. Still, this very same year a previous event was so overwhelming for each of us that it will eventually blur the corona crisis. Reinbert de Leeuw's death in mid-February ended a particularly intense nine-year collaboration between him and us. With the recording last January of Reinbert's version for ensemble of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, we helped him fulfil his last wish. In September 2020 this recording was released in Amsterdam and at Fondation Royaumont.
Das Lied von der Erde, MAHLER (arr. Reinbert de Leeuw)
Het Collectief (15 musicians)
Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor
Lucile Richardot & Yves Saelens, soloists