Voices of Destiny: Liszt’s Concerto and Mahler’s Sixth

Rafael Payare, conductor
Inon Barnatan, piano

LISZT: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major
MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor, “Tragic”

San Diego favorites Rafael Payare and pianist Inon Barnatan join forces for two Romantic masterpieces that confront the power of Fate. In an era when science was reshaping humanity’s understanding of the universe, artists like Liszt and Mahler turned inward, exploring the mystery of destiny and the courage required to face it.

Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 unfolds like an opera without words – its soloist cast as the hero in a drama of triumph and struggle. Once the most celebrated virtuoso in Europe, Liszt used dazzling technique and vivid theatricality to create music that pushed the piano to visionary extremes. Barnatan embodies the concerto’s hero, alternately bold and lyrical amid waves of orchestral color.

Written half a century later, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 expands this Romantic struggle into an epic. Quoting Liszt’s concerto near its opening, Mahler acknowledges his predecessor while plunging deeper into questions of destiny, mortality, and meaning. Scored for colossal forces – complete with the infamous “hammer blows of fate” – the symphony unfolds as an immense human tragedy. Mahler’s “Tragic” is both homage and prophecy: a portrait of heroism facing a collapsing world and a moving testament to the resilience of the human spirit.