Sunday morning piece. Also reminds me of my high school mate Pim who studied guitar and played Bach for his graduation from the conservatorium. And was an addict like me but didn’t make it out.
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I’ve heard pieces by Arvo Pärt for the first time recently. Their when came up on the “Hearts of Space” program a couple weeks ago. I really enjoy that style. Edit - I didn’t real8ze Pärt is the composer of Der Spiegel im Spiegel. That’s been a favorite for years!
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The first time I heard “O Fortuna” I literally got a chill down my spine.
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I love that opera. I had a small role in a production of that opera, when I was in school (I did my degree in vocal music: choirs and solo performance). The Queen of the Night is an iconic role: you never forget hearing her sing.
I was in the chorus for a production of La fille du régiment (Donizetti): that one was lots of fun - lighthearted, playful, catchy songs (like this one!).
My absolute favourite work of all time:
Mahler’s 2nd Symphony
“Resurrection”
He wrote it over a period of 6 years during which he faced some deep personal grief, including the loss of a greatly respected mentor, and the “resurrection” theme - and poetic choices - in the work is rooted in that grief, and the sense of renewal, of rising again past that loss: of resurrection. (There are several poetic sources for the words in this symphony but the source of the “resurrection” motif is in a poem by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, “Die Auferstehung” (The Resurrection), which Mahler heard after the death of his mentor. The key line there is “Rise again, yes, you shall rise again / My dust” [which makes me think of a modern rendition of the same renewal / rise again theme, by a modern Canadian folk music family, the Rankins: “We Rise Again”. The language of the heart - the human desire to connect and to communicate, from generation to generation and age to age - is eternal I think 
)
This video is Leonard Bernstein conducting the closing measures of the symphony, in 1974:
(If that video doesn’t work, this one is an alternate video of the same measures.)
It’s majestic. I love this.
The text sung in this section is:
Sterben werd’ ich, um zu leben!
Aufersteh’n, ja aufersteh’n wirst du,
Mein Herz, in einem Nu!
Was du geschlagen,
Zu Gott wird es dich tragen!
[I shall die, so as to live!
Arise, yes, you will arise from the dead,
My heart, in an instant!
What you have conquered
Will bear you to God.]
There’s something about this image - of renewal and transmutation, the way death, like birth, is a translation from one perspective to another, a transportation of self to a new vantage point - and how there is an electric, charged, energizing current to creation and recreation (of all types): there’s something about this which planted itself in my heart when I first heard this symphony, and never let go. I love it.