Anima Eterna Brugge

The concert reconciles. Hugo Wolf was the sworn enemy of Brahms following an incident once when the young man approached the elderly master for advice and support and in return received just a few niggardly words of praise. From this moment, Wolf penned critiques of Brahms’s works in fierce anger. Now, however, the Anima Eterna Brugge concert starts with three of his songs and concludes with the Symphony in C minor by Brahms. In fact, the very symphony which, immediately after its premiere, some critics (Wolf not being one!) called Beethoven’s tenth. Its closing movement has a soaring melody similar to the Ode to Joy. Gustav Mahler stands between the two ‘warring parties’. He was born in the same year as Wolf (1860) but harboured no hard feelings towards Brahms. He looked kindly on the fact that Brahms once congratulated him on an opera performance, in Budapest, in 1890. At that time Mahler was director here and conducted Don Giovanni. Baritone Thomas E. Bauer sings Songs of a Wayfarer, and then there is the famous Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony, which was worked into several films: anyone who has seen Death in Venice will never forget its melodies.