Richard Morrison- Do Classical Works About Mortality Reveal More To Us As We Get Older? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise?

As we get older do we respond differently to that vast canon of music dealing with mortality? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise? Or do human beings possess such a flexible sense of empathy that we can relate to virtually any state of mind if it is evoked convincingly enough by a composer?

- By Richard Morrison

Some decades ago, the Southbank Centre in London ran a concert series called Last Works, which did exactly what it said on the tin. It programmed music written by composers just before they died. As I recall, it wasn't a crowd-puller. People don't mind being reminded occasionally of their mortality, but several months of staring into the abyss of oblivion did seem a little morbid.

Yet much classical music is about confronting death - and it's not all written by composers facing imminent extinction. For every Mozart Requiem or Mahler Nine there's a Dream of Gerontius or St Matthew Passion masterpieces portraying the psychology surrounding death with acute empathy, yet written by composers in their prime.

And whether such pieces are written early or late in composers' lives, their interpreters will be performers of all ages. Years ago, I watched the National Youth Orchestra rehearsing Britten's