Gustav Mahler's music allows us to look into the depths of the soul. The works of the famous German composer bear witness to a time of extremes: the world at the end of the 19th century, full of progress on the one hand and misery on the other. The triple bill MAHLER X THREE MASTERS brings the composer together with three masters of dance. In Song of the Earth, created for the Stuttgart Ballet in 1965, Kenneth MacMillan traces the cycle of life to Mahler's eponymous orchestral song cycle. Maurice Béjart's Songs of a Wayfarer follows a man on his travels. Always present at his side is a messenger of death - or is it his guardian angel? John Cranko created Traces during the Cold War in 1973; it was one of his last works before his untimely death at age 45. To Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony, Cranko created his most political piece, depicting the struggle of a refugee - who has survived the horrors of an authoritarian regime and incarceration in its death camps – to acclimate to her new life in a free and modern society. More than 50 years after its world premiere, the piece has, sadly, lost none of its topicality.