Sir Simon Rattle conductor Magdalena Kožená mezzo-soprano Michael Schade tenor Messiaen: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum 26' Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (sung in German with English surtitles) 59' Twenty years to the day since Sir Simon Rattle and the CBSO inaugurated Birmingham’s brand new Symphony Hall, the legend returns. Sir Simon, mezzo Magdalena Kožená and tenor Michael Schade bring down the curtain on Birmingham’s centenary Mahler Cycle with the symphony that Mahler refused to call his Ninth, the heart-rending Das Lied von der Erde. Less a meditation on death, more a rapturous love-letter to the joys of life, Mahler simply doesn’t get more personal – or more beautiful. The evening opens with a very different (but no less transcendent) meditation on mortality, by another composer who came to define Sir Simon’s years at Symphony Hall: the late Olivier Messiaen. Unmissable.