In his four years as Music Director, following six years as Principal Guest Conductor, Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård has had a transformational effect on the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, unfailingly delivering performances of vivid drama and rare poetry that reaffirm the orchestra’s reputation as one of the UK’s finest.

Following their exceptional Mahler’s Seventh Symphony – part of the International Festival’s My Light Shines On series in 2020 – Søndergård and the RSNO return with the composer’s gargantuan Third Symphony, to fill the Usher Hall stage with the massed forces of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and RSNO Youth Chorus, alongside mezzo soprano Linda Watson.

Mahler’s Third is a massive hymn of praise to nature, humankind and God, and no other Mahler work better sums up the composer’s famous exhortation that ‘a symphony must be like the world – it must embrace everything!’ It’s a celebration of the richness and sensuality of life on a cosmic scale, like nothing that came before it – and nothing that followed it either.

Sung in German with English supertitles.