François-Xavier Roth presents the first of two concerts exploring the legacy of Romanticism through Wagner, Berg and Mahler.

Berg wrote the two most important operas of the 20th-century, Wagner was the great musical radical of the 19th. The first half of this concert sees a passing of the baton; the lush sounds that open Wagner’s final opera lead into Berg’s first efforts at song. Then Mahler’s Fifth Symphony concludes with a triumphant procession from a funeral march back towards life; an allegory, perhaps, for the artist’s own transition from one century into the next.

François-Xavier Roth on his ideas behind the After Romanticism series