Welcome to this digital edition of Phillip Huscher's Program Notes for upcoming concerts by the CSO Mar 30 - Apr 1. Over the last 10 years, Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have explored Mahler's legacy, taking Chicago audiences on a symphonic journey through landscapes of rich musical wisdom and piercing detail. Now they turn to one of the best loved of all his pieces, his Song of the Earth, a setting of poems that perfectly embodied Mahler's bittersweet view of the brevity of human life, and inspired some of the most beautiful and haunting music he ever wrote.