Saturday 20 June 2026 · 7.30pm
St John’s Waterloo, SE1 8TY
Price – Pay what you can (suggested: £15)
Orchestra for the Earth launches its 2026 Alpine Tour, What Nature Tells Me, with a London concert at St John’s Waterloo on Saturday 20 June, before travelling by train and coach to Austria for a series of performances and education projects in places closely connected to Gustav Mahler’s life and music.
Now in its ninth year, the Alpine Tour has become one of the orchestra’s defining projects: an ongoing exploration of the relationship between music, landscape and listening, centred on Mahler and the Alpine environments in which much of his music was conceived.
The 2026 programme, What Nature Tells Me, traces a single musical arc through Mahler’s life, from the freshness and folk-like early songs to the profound stillness of ‘Der Abschied’ (‘The Farewell) from Das Lied von der Erde (‘The Song of the Earth’). The London concert features
rising British baritone Michael Lafferty, with Mahler’s works arranged for chamber orchestra by conductor John Warner.
The programme also includes the world premiere of Eat Your Rage, a new commission by London-based composer Zhenyan Li, whose work has been performed by ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra and Ensemble Modern. The commission is a response to Mahler’s musical evocations of nature and forms part of OE’s ongoing commitment to placing new music alongside established repertoire within the same artistic and environmental context.
Following the London launch, the orchestra travels to Austria from 22–26 June, including a performance at the Gustav Mahler Festival in Steinbach am Attersee, where Mahler spent several summers composing, and a concert on an open-air stage in Steinach am Brenner, another
place closely associated with his summer retreats. When Bruno Walter visited Mahler in Steinbach in 1896, he marvelled at the surrounding landscape. Mahler replied simply: “No need to look around — I have already composed it all.” The Alpine Tour returns that idea to its source, placing the music back into dialogue with the
environments that helped shape it.
Marina Mahler, Founding Patron of Orchestra for the Earth, said: “It is deeply moving to see my grandfather’s music brought back into the landscapes that inspired it, and to see young people included in that experience. This kind of thoughtful, living engagement with Mahler’s work is both true to its origins and urgently relevant now.”
What Nature Tells Me takes place at St John’s Waterloo, London, on Saturday 20 June 2026 at 7.30pm.
London is the home to several dynamic String Ensembles, including soloists and String Quartets. They are available for hire from Music for London.
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