For each of the ten Mahler symphonies, Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini has composed a short orchestral work which contemplates Mahler’s music and intellectual world. The end of April sees the premiere of the fourth piece, “Incantesimo”.

Incantesimo, the fourth work commissioned by the Jena Philharmonic and its Music Director Simon Gaudenz, is an orchestral song. Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in G major, which ends with the Wunderhorn song “Das himmlische Leben”, is preceded by Scartazzini’s setting of Joseph von Eichendorff's “Abendständchen”. Sounding as if from a bygone age, it begins in the related key of E minor and extends its harmonic range from verse to verse.

The Italian word “incantesimo” means spell or enchantment, and the stem of the word includes the syllable “cant” (from cantare, to sing). Thus, the title of the work refers firstly to the soprano’s singing and secondly to the theme of Eichendorff’s poem itself: in the twilight silence, the song of the lonely boatman to his beloved is heard. It is a highly romantic, dreamily transfigured evening mood which the poet evokes and which seems wonderfully and strangely childlike through the frequent use of the same adjectives, such as golden, beautiful, and wonderful. “This ambiguity of the supposedly naive with echoes of children’s songs, the sound of a fiddle, and the image of a paradise as a utopian hereafter is the defining characteristic of Mahler’s 4th Symphony. Incantesimo likewise adopts this ‘as if’ as its own, and immerses itself in a world of longing, lost in reverie, with its simple strophic serenade.” (Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini)

Voice and poetry are also at the centre of Scartazzini’s next premiere – songs to texts by Nora Gomringer for the soprano Sarah Maria Sun, who premieres these with Jan Philip Schulze at the LIEDBasel 2020 Festival. And finally, the Swiss composer has created an orchestral work for the reopening of the Grand Casino Basel on 20 August 2020, the premiere to be conducted by Ivor Bolton.

Marie Luise Maintz
(from [t]akte 1/2020 – translation: Elizabeth Robinson)