BBC Philharmonic: Mahler Symphony No. 4
24th October 2026
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- Wheelchair Accessible
On dreams, dreaming, and nightmares
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
John Storgårds conductor
Alina Ibragimova violin
Sheva Tehoval soprano
Cassandra Miller Swim
Felix Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor
Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 4
If Mahler’s first three world-encapsulating symphonies come from an adult’s point of view, his fourth wonders how a child’s perspective might be different. But the childhood dreams Mahler weaves are not all naïve. Though we eventually arrive at Mahler’s childlike vision of heaven – In Das himmlische Leben, the part he composed first – menace and terror are present too.
To create Swim, Cassandra Miller took two chords by Robert Schumann, repeated them until they blurred, and then took them through a series of variations as suggested in an essay on swimming by the poet Anne Carson. Miller’s abiding image – of Robert Schumann, swimming in Carson’s Canadian lake – could only come from the mind of a committed dreamer.
In 1838, Felix Mendelssohn wrote to violinist Ferdinand David, describing ‘an E-minor theme that keeps running through my head, preventing me from thinking about anything else.’ From Mendelssohn’s dream came one of the great violin concertos.
