Tarmo Peltokoski conducts Mahler's "Titan" Symphony No. 1

One of the fastest-rising stars in classical music today, Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski has recently been named Principal Guest Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Music and Artistic Director of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the excellent Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse—who join him here for their first showing together at the storied Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam! Befitting the occasion, they take on a monument of the orchestral repertoire: the first symphony by one of the greatest ever to write for the genre, Gustav Mahler.

The "Titan" Symphony No. 1, with its quotations of Mahler's cycle Songs of a Wayfarer, already demonstrates the vocal-symphonic rapprochement that would later characterize the composer's Second, Third, and Eighth Symphonies. It also contains one of the most uncanny moments in music: the famous third movement funeral march based on the children's song Frère Jacques, a deliciously disconcerting detour preceding an epic fourth movement that begins in stormy F minor and finds its resolution in triumphant D major.

Photo © Peter Rigaud