Mahler: Symphony No. 1 (with Prokofiev - Piano Concerto No. 3) [recorded in 2009]

"Every visual detail caught by the eye becomes woven into the aural tapestry of Mahler's First Symphony. The tension is high from the beginning as spring rustles into life. Abbado carefully paces each surge in energy, each mood transformation. Every climax rings out with exultation" The Times, 2nd July 2010 ****

"Like a cry of Nature": thus the expression mark that opens Gustav Mahler's First Symphony - and the programme of the Festival 2009 which takes up Nature as its guiding theme. Mahler, in the First Symphony, shaped the "cry of nature" into a musical vision of an entire human life in four stages - from a spring-like upsurge of feelings through desire and suffering, to the end of earthly existence and the entrance into Paradise.

The opening treats listeners to a spectacular début as the twenty-two-year-old Chinese pianist Yuja Wang plays Sergei Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. In her Lucerne appearances she displays the full range of her artistry as Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto demands not only lyricism and intimacy but brilliance and virtuosity.

Claudio Abbado has realised a dream with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The orchestra consists of an exclusive ensemble of handpicked musicians like Kolja Blacher and Sebastian Breuninger, Natalia Gutman, Clemens Hagen and Jens Peter Maintz.

Claudio Abbado is undeniably a supreme Mahler conductor and his best selling recordings with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra - symphonies No. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 have already been released on EuroArts - have set new standards in interpretation of works by Gustav Mahler.