The Jena Mahler-Scartazzini cycle reaches its conclusion. In the final concert, all ten compositions by Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini which refer to Gustav Mahler’s symphonies will be performed.

The Swiss composer Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini has worked with the Jena Philharmonic for over seven years as composer-in-residence. He has created a work comprising ten short symphonic movements, each of which relates to the ten symphonies of Gustav Mahler which Music Director Simon Gaudenz and the Jena Philharmonic have performed since 2018.

On 5 June 2025 the cycle reaches its conclusion with the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, together will all ten of Scartazzini’s pieces. These will be played as a suite, and form a large, cohesive composition of almost Mahlerian length.

The last piece, “Einkehr” for soprano, alto, chorus and orchestra, receives its premiere in this concert, and is a setting of the first verse of Hölderlin’s famous elegy “Brot und Wein”. In moving fashion, the poem evokes images of a city which comes to rest, of the day which ends, of silence and reflection.

In this Scartazzini contrasts the pain, the fact that Mahler’s Tenth remained a fragment, with music which sings of the peace of completion.

The composer describes his orchestral work

“The piece begins onomatopoeically: the wind blows fine sounds closer, a hint of the sound of bells, the distant clatter of horses’ hooves, the rushing of fountains, a soft harp melody. And then the peaceful singing of the choir begins, at first regularly, then branching out contrapuntally, but always carried along by the warm sound of strings and brass. In the last third the soprano and alto soloists enter, their singing surrounded by the melody of the two solo trumpets from Torso, the first of the ten pieces. Further motifs are recalled and after a climax, lead Einkehr right back to the beginning, to the C sharp of the trumpet with which the cycle began.”

Editors    
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson – from [t]akte 1/2025)