Bernd Alois Zimmermann / Gustav Mahler

No other work of the second half of the 20th century so emphatically unites radiance of sound, direct emotion and biographical tragedy as much as Stille und Umkehr by Bernd Alois Zimmermann. It is Zimmermann’s final orchestral composition, written shortly before his suicide, whose 50th anniversary falls in 2020.

The tone D that is played from beginning to end burrows into the brain like tinnitus and sets off a persistent meditation on that tone. For a moment it is possible to appreciate the “sphericity” which Zimmermann pursued throughout his composing career – where past, present and future are united in time.

Gustav Mahler’s 6th Symphony also shows how personal suffering can be turned into music. As if struck by a giant hammer, violence switches abruptly into tenderness and tenderness into violence. In its ruggedly direct nature, this monumental work lasting 85 minutes, written between 1903 and 1904, is a herald of the modern age to come.