Celestial poetry

Ukranian composer and pianist (born in Kharkiv) Theodore Akimenko belongs to that post-romantic generation too brutally overshadowed by the more radical figures of modernity. Yet the work of this pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov and teacher of Stravinsky is well worth rediscovering. A unique alchemy blends the subdued reminiscences of the Russian colourism he would pass on to his pupil, a nostalgic Middle-European languor that brings him closer to Zemlinsky, and the orchestral magic of the French Impressionists, without leaving the slightest impression of a haphazard mix: as the nocturnal poem Ange from 1924 testifies, a true musical personality is at work.

At the end of the Second World War - which he weathered with a mixture of naiveté and opportunism - Richard Strauss is in himself an anachronism. In 1884, at the age of 20, he had become the most famous and modern of German composers with his symphonic poems. In 1945, at the age of 80, what does he have left? A few months or years at most. And yet, at the turn of an old German Romantic poem that sings of the end of the journey at twilight, inspiration is reborn, miraculous and fresh, eternally young.

Seemingly the composer's most appealing and accessible work, Gustav Mahler's Fourth Symphony is nonetheless elusive in many ways. At times deceptively naive and sincerely candid, at other moments grating and innocent, full of innuendo and yet literal, looking to the past as well as the future - it was completed at the junction of two centuries - it never ceases to show us its Janus-like face. The work is presented here in a brand-new critical edition based on corrections made by Mahler himself during his last New York concert in February 1911.