Musikfest Berlin: Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Joana Mallwitz with Tamara Stefanovich and Sarah Aristidou

In 1971, composer Luigi Nono met with artists and politicians in Chile, including Luciano Cruz Aguayo, one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Left. Back in Italy, he learnt of the young man's accidental death. Nono then composed a kind of ‘secular requiem’ for the activist, which was intended not only to convey grief but also the motivation to continue his social struggle.

To this end, the composer set a memorial poem by Julio Huasi to Luciano, which was also given the title ‘Como una ola de fuerza y luz’ (Like a wave of strength and light). Among Mahler's symphonies, No. 4 is comparatively straightforward in terms of instrumentation and length. There is ‘much laughter’ in it, the composer assured us in a letter after its completion in 1901. However, the feeling that hilarity and horror exist side by side and that the idyll is not to be trusted creeps in as soon as the retuned solo violin plays in the second movement. And if you listen very carefully to the text of the ambiguous Wunderhorn song ‘Das himmlische Leben’, you will learn that, at least for the ox and lamb, heaven in the land of milk and honey is not full of violins, as a German saying goes.