Biographers of Gustav Mahler have vied with one another to produce increasingly daring readings of his work through the prism of events in the composer’s life. A rewarding object for comparative analysis is his youthful four-movement cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, originally composed for voice and piano. Full of paradoxes, darkness and fantasy, these songs to the composer’s own words impose autobiographical associations from the very title of the work. In it, Mahler reveals himself to be an insatiable romantic wanderer – a tragic witness to his beloved’s wedding.

The work Der Ring ohne Worte does not appear in the catalogue of Richard Wagner’s oeuvre. Although the title may evoke associations with Romantic piano miniatures (songs without words), it is an extensive symphonic ‘synopsis’ of Der Ring des Nibelungen, written by American conductor Lorin Maazel, who died a decade ago. His ambitious aim was to condense the instrumental music from each movement of the great Wagnerian cycle in the right proportions and in such a way as to avoid adding bridges or modulations and to preserve the chronology of events. The result was a work lasting 70 minutes uninterrupted, which begins with the prelude to Das Rheingold and ends with the final notes of Götterdämmerung.