Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber: Songs of Gustav Mahler

Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber

October 25, 2019 | 7:30PM
Mandel Hall

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Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer)
              Lieder aus "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (Songs from The Boy's Miraculous Horn)
              Kindertotenlieder (
Songs on the Death of Children)

6:30 PM lecture with Berthold Hoeckner

Baritone Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber have one of the longest-standing partnerships in music, performing dozens of concerts together annually since 1988. Though the pair met when they were just twelve years old, it wasn’t until their years in university (Gerhaher as a philosophy-cum-medical student) that the two performed together. Though their partnership began casually (Gerhaher reports they met to “smoke, play cards, and sing for fun”), Gerhaher, in no small part due to Huber, has become “one of the finest Lieder singers of this or any generation” (The Guardian).

In just the last fifty or sixty years, Gustav Mahler has come to be regarded as one of the greatest symphonists to have ever lived. And while he is revered most for his symphonies, it is in his songs that he truly draws out, or rather delves into, the depths of human experience. There is perhaps no better pair to expose Mahler’s Lieder than Gerhaher and Huber. The two make it their mission to “understand every song, by whomever, as its own entity… [as the] sound of singular, particular identity…”, resulting in peerless performances and countless acclaimed recordings.

Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber, “the world’s greatest song partnership” (The New York Times) perform on the Classic Concert series in Mandel Hall on Friday, October 25, 2019. Before the performance, at 6:30 PM, Professor and Chair of the Department of Music Bertold Hoeckner gives a pre-concert lecture from the stage.

This concert is sponsored in part by Joan and James Shapiro