Residentie Orkest at the Festival of Zeelandic Flanders

Calliope Tsoupaki—former composer-in-residence for the Netherlands and a close associate of the “ Residentie Orkest ”—explores in *Falling* how we seek meaning anew in a world that has become unstable. The piece is compact—just thirteen minutes long—but intense and full of movement. Mahler then draws the emotion inward with one of his best-known song cycles: the Rückert Lieder. Five miniature reflections in which longing, tranquility, self-examination, and melancholy are laid bare without drama. Barbara Kozelj makes the songs almost tangible with her warm, resonant mezzo voice.

Dvořák’s fascinating Fifth Symphony concludes the concert not with spectacle, but with sunlight: warm, playful, and dancing. A symphony that smells of grass, earth, sun, and evening air. It is Dvořák at his most open, most free, and most blissful. Conductor Antony Hermus weaves a wonderful, breathing program between Tsoupaki’s air and Dvořák’s earth.