Bavarian Radio Chorus 
Howard Arman, artistic director
Musicbanda Franui

The Bavarian Radio Chorus and the Austrian ensemble Musicbanda Franui first worked together on a project entitled “Whither am I bound? – The Mahler Project”. Not unexpectedly, this collaboration proved to be very successful, so they have continued their musical association and expanded it to subsequent projects. The Bavarian Radio Chorus, founded in 1946, has built a prestigious reputation throughout the world as a choir with a remarkably homogeneous sound and a stylistic versatility that covers every area of choral singing from the medieval motet to contemporary music. Since 2016 its artistic director has been the London-born conductor Howard Arman, the former director of the Salzburg Bach Choir and the Leipzig-based MDR Radio Choir. Musicbanda Franui brings together excellent woodwind, brass and string players, who together form a unique musical ensemble specialising in the performance of unusual and rarely performed chamber pieces.

The evening will be principally dedicated to works by Gustav Mahler and Carl Loewe, the latter a German composer, tenor singer and conductor who wrote more than 400 ballads and songs. Loewe’s Liederwere so well known in the first half of the nineteenth century that some referred to him as the “Schubert of North Germany” and he made a powerful impression on the young Mahler. A selection of Mahler’s most beautiful Liederwill therefore be joined by a handful of Loewe’s songs.