Mahler’s debut symphony (1888) stands among the most radiant works of late Romanticism — its “last roses.” According to the composer’s letters, the symphony’s “protagonist” is a young man of pure heart, naïve and open to the world, who must endure trials and losses, encounter pain, disappointment, and hypocrisy — and through them attain maturity. Here one recognizes the structure of the classical Bildungsroman — the coming-of-age narrative in which personal growth is inseparable from suffering. In its early version, the symphony even bore a subtitle alluding to a novel by the German Romantic writer Jean Paul.

Later, Mahler renounced any programmatic explanations, allowing the music to speak for itself. The symphony opens wie ein Naturlaut — “as if it were a sound of nature” — with a barely audible A that rises through the orchestra from the lowest to the highest register: an infinite, cosmic tone from which the contours of a world slowly emerge. Within this world unfolds the hero’s path — from bright hopes and youthful wonder to encounters with banality, falseness, and the cry of pain that opens the finale. Yet Mahler ends his First Symphony in dazzling light — an affirmation of life and renewal.

Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto (1935), written more than two decades after Mahler’s death, belongs to the same spiritual realm. Its refined lyricism, fragile and aching beauty, and profound sense of light’s vulnerability to darkness continue the quest of the Austrian Romantic.

The subtitle “To the Memory of an Angel” refers to Manon Gropius — the daughter of Mahler’s widow, Alma, and her second husband, the architect Walter Gropius. A girl of rare talent and beauty, Manon died of poliomyelitis at eighteen. Berg, who was close to the family, felt her death as a personal loss. Having already begun the concerto, he completed it as a requiem, dedicating it to her memory and creating one of the most sublime and moving meditations on grief and farewell in European music.