Gustav Mahler suffered a series of tragic blows in 1907: the demand for his resignation from the Vienna Opera, the death of his eldest daughter, and the diagnosis of his own fatal heart disease. His experience of death doubtless makes the Song of the Earth both an abyss of despair on the verge of oblivion and a pantheistic sublimation, emphasised by the reiteration of the word “ewig” (“forever”) before it disappears into ecstatic silence. More than ever, Mahler is conscious of the beauty of nature, the misery of mankind, and the brevity of life. With a superb vocal duo, mezzo Dame Sarah Connolly and tenor Toby Spence, Alexandre Bloch will bring his Mahler cycle, which began in 2019, to a breath-taking close.