Programme Mahler Festival 2025 announced
The Concertgebouw will welcome top orchestras from three continents to the third Mahler Festival in its history. This ten-day event will be opened by the Concertgebouworkest with Klaus Mäkelä conducting the First Symphony, followed later in the festival by Mahler’s Eighth, the Symphony of a Thousand. Conductor Jaap van Zweden will conduct Symphonies No. 6 and No. 7 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The acclaimed Berlin Philharmonic led by principal conductor Kirill Petrenko and guest-conductor Daniel Barenboim will also perform during the festival, in which Mahler’s ten symphonies as well as all his songs can be heard. Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra visits Europe for the festival led by conductor Fabio Luisi. Iván Fischer finishes off the line-up with his Budapest Festival Orchestra.
Check out the programme of the Mahler Festival 2025
Ticket sales for the passe-partouts giving access to all ten concerts will start on Tuesday 14 November 2023.
Gustav Mahler and his second musical homeland
Composer and conductor Gustav Mahler had a strong bond with The Concertgebouw. To conductor Willem Mengelberg he wrote that he found ‘his second musical homeland’ in Amsterdam. He conducted his own symphonies with the Concertgebouworkest several times and was honoured by the attention and enthusiasm shown by Amsterdam audiences. As an homage to the composer, Conductor Willem Mengelberg organised the first Mahler Festival in 1920 to mark his 25th anniversary conducting.
Amsterdam audiences’ love of Mahler has only grown with time. In 1995, the Concertgebouw organised another Mahler Festival, bringing together the world’s best orchestras for consecutive performances of the composer’s complete symphonic works in chronological order. A new Mahler Festival was planned for 2020 but had to be cancelled due to the corona pandemic.